p. 175 | LO HERE by Chas. L. Boyd

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · May 30, 1878

“LO HERE.”

By Chas. L. Boyd

Not long ago I called on a man who had been pointed out to me as an Adventist. I found him just ready to start in pursuit of a paper of which he had heard, containing the tidings that the Saviour had made his second advent and was now on the earth. He said he expected the Saviour to come and set up his kingdom, which, in its commencement, will be like a grain of mustard seed planted in the earth, and like it will grow till it fills the whole earth. He thinks the fire which consumes sin and purifies the earth will commence in some locality, and after this spot is purified it will gradually extend to other places, till the whole earth is cleansed.

I tried to reason with him, and show him that Jesus himself has declared that his second coming will be like the lightning, and with a great sound of a trumpet; that every eye shall see him; and that all the sleeping saints shall hear his voice and come forth to meet him, as he comes attended by all the retinue of Heaven. But this was all to be fulfilled by a gradual conversion of the world, or the destruction of the wicked as they rejected their King. I was astonished that a man of judgment should be so fixed in such an unreasonable and unscriptural position; but when he told me that for ten years he had been fighting the law of God, advocating the doctrine that the promised Comforter is only the written word, and denying the work of the Spirit of God on the hearts of his people, the mystery was solved.

I left him, grieved that souls will be deceived by such doctrines of darkness, but with a heart filled with gratitude to God for the glorious light of the third angel’s message, which, like the rising sun, is shining brighter and brighter upon our pathway, and is penetrating the mists of papal error which have settled over the Protestant world.

Dear reader, this is a testing truth, one by which we show our loyalty to God and his government. It is an antidote against the various delusions which are flooding our land. It carries us into the sanctuary of Heaven, where we behold the commandments of God, and our great High Priest making an atonement for our sins. By this truth we are shielded from the errors of those who cry, “Lo here,” and of those who say, “All things continue as they were from the beginning of the creation of the world.” He who closes his eyes to this light, and his “ear from hearing the law,” is like the mariner who sails on the wild Atlantic with neither chart nor compass; and he who leaves this faith is like the man who steps from the well-tried ship propelled by the breezes of heaven, to a wooden “float.”

CHAS. L. BOYD.