God Is Faithful by E. Booth

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Jun 28, 1870

God Is Faithful.

By E. Booth

Many cases of striking interest reveal the truthfulness of God’s working in mysterious ways to perform his promises. He is ever prepared to work mighty deliverance, and remove the greatest hindrances, to arrest the powerful attacks of the enemy.

Though the instrumentalities seem feeble, they can bring large results; and conquests, such as those wrought through the faithful Jewish queen, can be given the waiting people of God. And though we cannot see or determine in what manner the promised blessing can be accomplished from surrounding evil agencies, still remember that God is faithful in the performance of every promise.

Take the brief history of Samson for an example. Though born of promise, yet, in his willful disposition and wayward career, his ungoverned and unrestrained propensities, and the fear his nation had of him, wherein could he have been viewed as their deliverer? In order to fill up historical time, Samson is said to have judged Israel forty years; while he was, during this time, as great a fear and dread to his countrymen as were the Philistines whom they served. Judges 15:12 shows their lack of confidence in him.

With such a leader, the three thousand armed men of Judah might have been invincible against their foes. Whether the depression caused by their servitude prevented their assisting this wonderful deliverer, or whether it was existing evils, we are left to conjecture. At least for some reason God saw it not best to work deliverance then, and it was not predicted. Samson should only begin to deliver Israel.

Like as his trespasses and exploits were performed unaided, singly and alone, so were the signal judgments in a peculiar manner visited upon his own head. From the slaying of the lion to the bowing beneath the mighty grasp of the pillars when the Lord heard his humble cry, “O Lord God, remember me, I pray thee, and strengthen me, I pray thee, only this once, O God, that I may be at once avenged of the Philistines for my two eyes,” he stood a gigantic object, solitary and alone.

Helplessness, degradation, servitude and the deepest afflictions, brought him through the bitter valley of humiliation; and now the Lord could use him with his returned powers to accomplish his word; for Samson slew at his death more Philistines “than they which he slew in his life;” and Israel was soon delivered.

God is as faithful and his word as truthful still; but he can no more work through us, or use us as humble instruments of good, while harboring willful obstinacy, malice and revenge, pride and unsubdued passions, than he could through those in former ages. If we then are awaiting that grace to be revealed in the last time, we ought to be preparing to escape afflictions by fitting ourselves for the Master’s use. Or must we pass through the heated furnace, be bowed and broken to be saved, if saved at all? We each can come up boldly to the great work there is to do, by cultivating Christian moral courage, and putting away those lusts which are warring against the soul.

Better that we accomplish what there is to do, that God can show his faithfulness through us who profess to believe, than that we grow weary in well doing, and either receive the severe chastening of the Lord, or find our position among those to whom his wrath will be none the less faithful. E. BOOTH.