UP-HILL BUSINESS by D. T. T.

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Mar 28, 1878

UP-HILL BUSINESS.

By D. T. T.

The conversion of the whole world of mankind to Christ by the instrumentality of the gospel is a pet theory with most of the churches; and because it is believed this great feat must and will be accomplished before the second advent, these mistaken theorists refuse utterly to see any signs of the Bridegroom at hand in our day. Before a person can be persuaded to look for Christ, the notion of a temporal millennium and converted world must be torn from him. Now I am heartily in favor of carrying the gospel to all nations, tribes, and tongues; and I believe the two principal reasons why this has not been done long ago are seen in the persistent, ungodly, infernal course of the ruling nations of the civilized world, and the enormous waste of the wealth of nations and people for war and intoxicants. Give me the money spent for war, rum, tobacco, etc., since the era of the Great Reformation, and I could send the gospel into every part of the habitable world in two years.

When this is done, and a fine, powerful, civilized, and educated people is raised up, where is the proof or assurance that they will all receive the gospel, all be converted to Christ, and that sin and crime will be any less vile, bold, and prevalent than it is to-day in England and America? Our country has the gospel; but not over one in every seven of our forty millions is a professed Christian. Great nations shed the blood of one another. An age of murder, singly and wholesale, is established, and Satan holds high carnival in all so-called Christian lands where to-day the light of the gospel of Jesus shines the brightest. This is indeed a sad condition of things among men bought with the blood of the Lamb of God, who so loved the world as to die to bless and save it.

Look, for instance, at Africa. There are perhaps 65,000,000 souls within her vast borders; but how many have been gathered into the church as the fruit of missionary toil and labor? Only 130,000. It is the nineteenth century of the last, the gospel dispensation, but there are still in Africa 499 heathen to 1 Christian. I have in part stated the reason. It is because in gospel countries nine-tenths of the money goes for war, rum, tobacco, lust, and fashion. Wo unto thee, America! wo unto thee, England! for if the mighty works which have been done in thee had been done in Africa and China, they would have repented long ago, and bowed to the King.

Who can wish Africa converted to the sad condition of our own country, where ten times as much is spent for the lust of the flesh, and ten times as much for strong drink and mocking wine, as is spent for the sacred cause of Christianity? Where is the profit in bringing Africa to the sad moral condition of our own States, in every one of which crime is on the increase? Where is the gain of making Africa and China like rum-drinking Great Britain, or beer-guzzling Germany—converted to our thefts, our frauds, our murders, our high-handed national and individual sins? Wherein, to-day, is Africa, in her darkness and ignorance, any more wicked than our country, with its light and its Bibles?

It is up-hill business converting the world when the world refuses, point-blank, to be converted. And our ardent and enthusiastic “temporal millennium” folks are finding this out. Their treasuries are empty, while the coffers of the warring powers are ever full, and the deluge of whisky ever overflows. Would it were different! We who expect the Lord are accused of indifference to missions. Far from it. I wish there were ten thousand Adoniram Judsons, and ten millions of dollars to send them away into heathendom, where to-day there is a solitary man and a single dollar. But when men persist in the teeth of opposing Scripture, persist against all reason, and all fact, and all analogy in saying all men must be converted, and Christ cannot come until they are, I hold this to be a deceptive and egregious error. Cease to prate about the world’s conversion, and in a truer vein of thought agitate the New Testament plan of carrying the good news of a Saviour to all, leaving the question of its acceptance or otherwise to God. The church should do her duty, always and everywhere; she should remember that the first Christians—as Neander testifies—did not expect the struggle between good and evil, between the church and the world powers, to cease until the return of the Lord. The Protestantism of to-day is in danger of sliding into Rome’s position, and asserting herself a “queen,” vested with divine power to reign. The Corinthian Christians fell into the same error, and Paul, with sharp irony, rebuked them. 1 Cor. 4:8.

Personal holiness and waiting for the Bridegroom is the believer’s first duty. Toil for the coming One, sacrifice, missionary labor, scattering Bibles as forest-leaves,—all these, and martyrdom itself, grow out of this basic preparation and position. Let us work on, to the utmost of human ability; then leave to God’s gracious will and plan the result. If millions of heathen die, not hearing of Jesus, I will leave them to a good and merciful, a wise and just God, at the Day of Judgment.—D. T. T., in Bible-Banner.