STICKING TO THE MESSAGE.
By Editor
THE following is from a thoughtful editorial in the World's Crisis, the leading First-day Adventist paper in the United States:— "We must unify our forces, concentrate our testimony. We are now quoted—and truthfully too—as holding so many opposites. Men say of us, No two of them agree. Yet each claims that the Bible is a plain book, and teaches plainly. This is our weakness, a great cause of our inefficiency. It comes of not sticking to the message with which God started us out. The remedy is in leaving all minor questions, and matters we don't know about, to be settled by the judgment, and preaching what God gave us to preach at the beginning,—the coming of Christ, why he is coming, what he will do when he comes, and preparation to meet him. This is message enough. This will distinguish us as a people. We do not need to preach vagaries, or uncertainties, in order to be noted. God will honor those that cling to the simplicity of the Word. Preach the Word." But the preaching of the Word and sticking to the advent message will inevitably lead to the proclamation and keeping of the commandments of God and the faith of Jesus. Rev. 14:6-14 is one message. Its result is set forth in verse 12, in developing a class of people who keep the commandments of God and the faith of Jesus. It prepares them for the coming of Christ, as revealed in verse 14. The message God gave the Advent people in 1840 and onwards was a living, moving message. Sticking to that message is going forward, following with it, even as the third angel followed with the first and second, even as the disciples followed with Jesus. Why cling to the moldy bread of the past? It was good then; but the bread of to-day is that which God gives fresh from heaven. Feeding upon that, giving that to the world, is sticking to the message God is giving to prepare a people for Christ's coming.