Words of Wisdom

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Apr 30, 1894

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 20, No. 26.

Words of Wisdom.—In his comments on Matt. 12:43-45 Dean Alford, the noted Episcopal scholar and commentator, refers to the apostasy, captivity, reformation, and final apostasy of the Jewish Church in the rejection of Christ, to the destruction of the nation. He continues in words which should be heeded now:—

Strikingly parallel with this runs the history of the Christian church. Not long after apostolic times the golden calves of idolatry were set up by the Church of Rome. What the effect of the captivity was to the Jews that of the Reformation has been to Christendom. The first evil spirit has been cast out. But, by the growth of hypocrisy, secularity, and rationalism, the house has become empty, swept, and garnished, swept and garnished by the decencies of civilization and discoveries of secular knowledge, but empty of earnest and living faith. And he must read prophecy but ill who does not see under all these seeming improvements the preparation for the final development of the man of sin, the great re-possession, when idolatry and the seven worse spirits shall bring the outward frame of Christendom to a fearful end.

Dean Alford knew it because God has foretold it in his “more sure word of prophecy.” “Blessed is he that watcheth.”