Not Always So | AdventAI

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Sep 27, 1899

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 25, No. 39.

Not Always So.

A modern poet thus writes:— > "Day by day love's rose unfolding, > First the bud and then the bloom, > In our heart of hearts we're holding, > Bringing sunshine to life's gloom. > But, too late, we learn with sorrow, > Shades of night must follow morn; > Joy to-day is grief to-morrow; > Every rose must have its thorn."

If this world were all, this would be true. But there is a glorious beyond. God's flowers of hope bear no thorns. Here realization of joy does not often meet expectation; but in God's glorious fruition His children will say, "Not one good thing has failed [us] of all that the Lord our God has promised." Nay, more, the light afflictions of this time, if borne in faith, work out for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory in eternal day.

Apostolic Succession.

Upon this the Oriental Watchman (Calcutta) well remarks: "The only apostolic succession that the Bible knows anything of is that of apostolic faithfulness in preaching the Word. 'And the things that thou hast heard of me among many witnesses, the same commit thou to faithful men, who shall be able to teach others also.' 2 Tim. 2:2. The important thing was the teaching, and the command of the Lord was that believers should teach all things that He had commanded, even unto the end of the world: 'I charge thee therefore before God, and the Lord Jesus Christ, . . . preach the Word.' He, then, is in the apostolic succession who preaches the Word. A writer has well said:—

" 'It certainly is very remarkable that the Anglican clergy should claim a special grace of the Holy Spirit coming to them through the worldly, tyrannous, persecuting bishops of the Romish Church in the middle ages, and not through the obscure, holy martyrs whom they persecuted. Surely, if there was such a line of grace, it would be found in those who were faithful unto death for the truth as it is in Jesus, rather than with those who put to torture and cruel death the saints of God.'

"Those who suffered at the hands of a worldly church in possession of power were, in that respect at least, in the apostolic succession; for that was the experience of the apostles of the Lord. The tradition of the church puts in the line of apostolic succession the proud prelates of church history who lorded it over God's heritage—often men of the lowest stamp of vileness and criminality; but God places there the unnamed multitudes who overcame 'by the blood of the Lamb, and by the word of their testimony; and they loved not their lives unto the death.' "