Your ShelfYour Projects

Not in Darkness

20%

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Jul 11, 1871

FromReview and Herald, Vol. 38, No. 4.

Read the full edition

Not in Darkness.

By Roswell F. Cottrell

“YE, brethren, are not in darkness, that that day should overtake you as a thief.” Yet professors of faith in Christ seem determined to be in darkness. They intend to be prepared for death. They think that will answer every purpose, even if the day of Christ should come upon them as a thief. So they close their eyes to the evidences that the advent is near, even at the doors. They seem to have made a covenant with death to take them to Heaven, and are at agreement with the grave, therefore the coming of the Lifegiver does not seem desirable to them. See Isa. 28 : 14-22.
That the people may not be in darkness concerning the approach of the day of Christ, the Lord has prepared a threefold warning to precede it. The three angels of Rev. 14 : 6-12 symbolize the three solemn warnings that are to be loudly proclaimed in the world immediately preceding the coming of the Son of Man. Christ will not come till these warnings have been given and heeded by all his saints who shall be living at the close of the third and last. These may all be given, and yet the unbelieving not recognize them, and consequently not know of the approach of the day of Christ, any more than the antediluvians knew of the approach of the flood. Notwithstanding the preaching of Noah and the building of the ark, they “knew not till the flood came and took them all away.” And so the Saviour says it will be with men in the day of his second coming. But can these thrilling warnings be given, and yet real Christians, true believers in the word of God, be ignorant of the fact that the day of Christ is at hand, and they not be expecting it when it comes? It is impossible. What absurdity to suppose that the last great conflict between light and darkness, truth and error, should take place as marked out beforehand in prophecy, and yet the true soldiers of the cross not be aware of it, and their great Captain come unexpectedly to them to crown them victors!
No! This will not be. On the contrary, those that have gotten the victory in this last great struggle will exclaim when Christ shall appear, “Lo! this is our God; we have WAITED FOR HIM, and he will save us.” Isa. 25 : 9.
R. F. COTTRELL.