p. 131 | The A. & S. Business by The Christian

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Oct 20, 1874

The A. & S. Business.

By The Christian

Once, in the earliest days of Christianity, the Almighty interposed by miracle and struck two persons dead—the only two from among the people of God, of whom we have any account since the dispensation of law gave place to that of grace. These persons were among the earliest adherents of Christianity, and were interested in the great work that was introduced by the Pentecostal baptism of the spirit. They had zeal and were disposed to make sacrifices “for the cause.” They were persons of some means, and were not like many Christians now-a-days, who keep buying more property, and so are always poor, always in debt, and always unable to give more than a mere pittance for the work of God and the necessities of his people. So far from this, they were ready to sell property, that they might have money to give away; and they probably were nearer the gospel standard in this respect than nine-tenths of the Christian professors are to-day. They sold a possession, and brought a certain part—doubtless a liberal portion—and laid it at the apostles’ feet. But they died. The curse of God smote them, and they were carried out from that place to their graves; and their names were left, clothed with infamy, as a warning to the church in all subsequent ages.

What did they do? They sold property, they gave money; but they wanted more reputation than belonged to them, and to gain it they gave part of the money, and told part of the truth; just that part that would favor their own reputation; concealed the rest; and tried to put on a smooth outside over a sinful heart. Peter said they lied, and lied not to men, but to God. But Peter had a very blunt way of speaking out. Now-a-days men would say, “There was a slight discrepancy between the statements made by Ananias and Sapphira and the facts in the case.”

The Ananias and Sapphira business flourishes still. God does not kill liars now as he did then, and men take courage and tell their smooth stories. Peter is dead, and no one corners them up, and so they keep at it.

Editors who publish just as much truth as will help their reputation and their party, and refuse to correct the falsehoods they have circulated and the misrepresentations that they have made; biographers who paint such immaculate saints that their subjects would not know their own lives if they should rise from the dead, and read them; preachers who blow their own trumpets, and magnify their great revivals which never happened, or which candid Christian people cannot find; swindlers who fail in business and put their property out of their hands, and pretend that they cannot pay their debts; members of religious societies who transact their affairs by craft and deception; leaders of associations who cloak the villainies of their friends and supporters; rich men who invest their own money where it will draw good interest, and then beg funds from the poor to pay their own salaries and sustain the cause of God; people who say, Peace, peace, when there is no peace, and who compromise truth, and indorse hypocrites and rascals who should be rebuked and exposed;—these and a thousand others of their kith and kin, who suppose that they are doing God service, and think themselves exceedingly shrewd—are they not getting into the Ananias and Sapphira business? The business seems safer now than it did in Peter’s time; so much so that if a man has truth in the inward parts, and tells it out to the world or to the church, he is at once liable to be denounced or set aside as a troubler of Israel, and is like his Master, “despised and rejected of men.” But possibly this seeming security is a delusion and a snare. There is a God of truth, and there is a day of Judgment. “And all liars”—those that make lies, and those that love lies, and would make them if they dared to, and even those who lie by keeping back part of the truth—“shall have their part in the lake that burneth with fire and brimstone.”

Good friends, if you are going into the Ananias and Sapphira business, please add into your reckoning not only the present profits, but also the “lake of fire,” and then ask, “What shall it profit a man if he gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?”—The Christian.