p. 106 | THE DAY OF PREPARATION by G. V. Kilgore

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Apr 6, 1876

THE DAY OF PREPARATION.

By G. V. Kilgore

“Go through, go through the gates; prepare ye the way of the people; cast up, cast up the highway; gather out the stones; lift up a standard for the people.” Isa. 62: 10.

Here is a prophetic command. It was given by inspiration, and will be fulfilled. It is a work to be performed by the watchmen on the walls of Zion in connection with the proclamation of the second coming of Christ; for the next verse says, “Behold, the Lord hath proclaimed unto the end of the world, Say ye to the daughter of Zion, Behold, thy salvation cometh.” Christ will bring salvation when he appears the second time. Heb. 9: 28. The work of warning the world is an important one; for the Lord declares that his watchmen “shall never hold their peace day nor night.” The same work is referred to in chapter 57: 13, 14, where we read that companies shall be taken by vanity; but they that trust in the Lord shall inherit his holy mountain, “and shall say, Cast ye up, cast ye up, prepare the way, take up the stumbling-block out of the way of my people.” Thus it is evident that in the end of the world an alarm is to be sounded, telling the inhabitants that the day of the Lord is near, and urging them to prepare for it.

What is this preparation work of which Isaiah speaks, this stumbling-block to be taken out of the way, and this standard to be lifted up?

“The way” is the way of God’s people. Ps. 119: 1–3, shows that the law of the Lord is the way in which those who do no iniquity walk. But when the proclamation of the coming salvation of the daughter of Zion is made, it is found that a stumbling-block has been thrown in this “way;” and that it is necessary to lift up a standard for the people. The term standard signifies “an established rule or model; a criterion; a test.”—Worcester. The wise man says, “Fear God, and keep his commandments; for this is the whole duty of man. For God shall bring every work into Judgment, with every secret thing.” Then the commandments of God are to be the standard or test in the Judgment. This is plain.

But what is the stumbling-block that has caused the people to turn to “vanity,” and “stumble in their ways from the ancient paths, to walk in paths, in a way not cast up”? Jer. 18: 15. It evidently is something in regard to the law of God. Daniel predicted that the papacy would think to change times and the laws of the Most High. Catholic priests really do think their church had a right to do what they claim it has done; namely, to change the law of God, which says, “The seventh day is the Sabbath.” They teach in their Sunday-schools that they have substituted Sunday for Saturday. They claim that the “very act of changing the Sabbath into Sunday” shows their authority to command feasts and holy days. Unwittingly, they claim to have done what the prophet said they would “think” to do. The priests of the Romish Church have hidden their eyes from God’s holy Sabbath, and have torn it out of his law, making a gap in that hedge which should protect the people of God, keeping them in the truth. Is not this the stumbling-block which has caused many to stumble out of the “ancient paths”?

In Eze. 13 it is intimated that a preparation must be made for the day of the Lord, by making up the hedge for the house of Israel to stand in the battle of that day. But the prophets (teachers) of Israel at this time refuse to do this work. Verse 5. That this text refers to the violence done to the law of God in regard to the Sabbath, the twenty-second chapter shows. After speaking of the priests, saying that they put no difference between the holy and the profane, and that they hide their eyes from His Sabbaths, the Lord says, “I sought for a man among them, that should make up the hedge, and stand in the gap before me for the land, that I should not destroy it; but I found none.” In the thirteenth chapter he declares, “They have seen vanity”—the very thing that Isaiah says will take companies at the time they that trust in the Lord are saying, “Prepare the way, take up the stumbling-block out of the way of my people.” The Lord continues: “They have seen vanity and a lying divination, saying, The Lord saith; and the Lord hath not sent them; and they have made others to hope that they would confirm the word. Have ye not seen a vain vision, and have ye not spoken a lying divination, whereas ye say, The Lord saith it?”

This is similar language to that which is heard everywhere at the present day: “The Lord said the Sabbath should be changed.” And, “The first day of the week is the Lord’s day. He has blessed it, and sanctified it, and I love it.” Ministers preach so, they pray so, and the people love to have it so. “They have made others to hope that they would confirm the word.” But where does the Lord say so? In all the word of God not a scrap of evidence can be found to prove such assertions. Therefore the Lord adds to what he has already said, “Albeit I have not spoken.” Then he declares he is against them, because they have seduced his people, saying, “Peace; and there was no peace.” And Paul says, “The day of the Lord so cometh as a thief in the night. For when they shall say, Peace and safety, then sudden destruction cometh upon them.”

The hedge in which Rome has made a gap must be made up. If priests and great men will not do it, plowmen and boys can, if the Lord calls them. The work will be accomplished. The breach must be repaired. It will be done, by those who refrain from “speaking vanity.” It will be done, too, by honoring the Lord’s Sabbath. Hear the word of the Lord: “Thou shalt be called, The repairer of the breach, the restorer of paths to dwell in. If thou turn away thy foot from the Sabbath, from doing thy pleasure on my holy day; and call the Sabbath a delight, the holy of the Lord, honorable; and shalt honor him, not doing thine own ways, nor finding thine own pleasure, nor speaking thine own words.” Isa. 58: 12, 13. “Blessed is the man that doeth this, and the son of man that layeth hold on it; that keepeth the Sabbath from polluting it, and keepeth his hand from doing any evil.” When? The verse immediately preceding this one says it is when the salvation of God is near to come, and his righteousness to be revealed. Isa. 56: 1, 2.

But the universal question to-day is, Why have not these things been found out before? God sends warnings when they are needed. He reveals his secrets to his servants the prophets, and although they are written hundreds of years before they are sounded to the world, they are sure to be brought out. The Lord revealed to his servant Isaiah that a voice would be heard crying, “Prepare ye the way of the Lord, make straight in the desert a highway for our God.” Time rolled on, but no one was heard raising that cry, until a lone man in the wilderness of Judea, seven hundred years afterward, proclaimed: “I am the voice of one crying in the wilderness, Make straight the way of the Lord, as said the prophet Esaias.” Why was it necessary to prepare the way just then? Was it not always important to be ready to meet the Lord? Why was not that message given before? Oh, all say, the time for it to be given had not come before. But how did John the Baptist know that the time had come, and he was the one to raise the cry? Inspiration told him; and so by the word of inspiration we know that near the time of the second coming of Christ a work is to be done to prepare a people to receive him.

G. V. KILGORE.