EDITORIAL by Editor

Pacific Press Publishing Association · Mountain View, California · Oct 31, 1911

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 38, Nos. 43, 44.

EDITORIAL

By Editor

A Message and a Mission

READER, this paper stands for a Message and a Mission. The Message is "the everlasting Gospel," the "eternal Good Tidings" of God for to-day. The Mission is by the proclamation of that Message under God to save souls; and "as we were allowed of God to be put in trust with the Gospel, even so we speak; not as pleasing men, but God, which trieth our hearts." We believe that the Message and the Mission are needed to-day; that they are in the plan of God due and applicable in this present time.

THE people who publish this journal are a Bible people, believing in the all-sufficiency, in the infallible guidance, of the Old Book. They believe that simple faith in its teaching is sufficient without a hindering human creed which would crystallize God's living truth into cramped dead forms. They believe that the great vital Gospel of God is in its fulness adapted to every human need, and in its expansive life development meets the requirements, the demands, of every age till its work is accomplished and all things are gathered into one in Christ Jesus our Lord.

MARVELOUS work was wrought by the apostolic church. Copiously fell the early rain of the Spirit, and abundant was the harvest. But the fine gold became changed; men arose, "speaking perverse things," and drew "away disciples after them." "Grievous wolves" came in, "not sparing the flock." Acts 20:29, 30. "Teachers having itching ears" were tolerated as leaders in the household of God, and many were turned away from the truth of the Word to the sophistries and fables of heathen philosophies. 2 Tim. 4:1-4. The Holy Spirit was grieved; spiritual gifts were little manifest; form and ceremony were substituted for the lost regeneration and spirituality; tradition usurped the place of the Word; and having lost spiritual power by breaking with Christ, the church sought a substitute by union with the world and the State. The opinions of men brought confusion which the Bible designates as Babylon. Union with the world, with the State, God calls fornication. Out of the tradition, the error, the assumption of men, the union with the State, grew the formalism, the darkness, the intolerance of the Medieval Ages.

To UNIFY the divisions, to heal the sore sickness, to give hope again to hearts longing for light in darkness, praying for life in death, God sent the messages of the Reformation of the sixteenth century. This mighty reform was correct in principle in being based on the Word of God as the rule of faith, on the Holy Spirit as its power, on Jesus Christ alone as Saviour and King, with the utter repudiation of the union of Church and State. We honor those mighty men for their work's sake. We approve their basic principles, because in harmony with the Gospel. Yet we all appreciate the great sad fact that they saw not all things clearly. Not a few of them were not consistent with their expressed principles; and in many cases their followers repudiated the basic principles of the Reformation, by the adoption of the very things that brought weakness and apostasy in the early church, and which developed into the intolerance and persecution of the Dark Ages. For dead formalism and intolerance ever follow a traditionary creed and union with the State. This demanded the noble work of Wesley, Finney, and others. A mighty reviving came to many hearts in the opening work of modern missions; and we rejoice in all that has been wrought by the noble souls in all the centuries of the past.

WE honor the Reformers, mistaken tho they were in some particulars, for their work of faith. We honor God's advance guard in modern missions, under whatsoever name they wrought. They were God's pioneers, who broke ground in the dark, hard fields of the earth. We honor them for their "labor of love" and their "patience of hope;" not alone those whom we have specially named, and whose portraits appear elsewhere in this issue, such as Eliot and Ziegenbalg and Carey and Morrison; but the many others also, like Brainerd and Duff and Martyn and Paton, who held not their life dear if His cause could be served, who counted it joy to suffer for His sake, who gave their lives, like the Master, for others.

THE great movement of modern missions was in the order of God. It was not only a logical result of the great Reformation, but it was a subject of prophecy. The war of infidel France against the Bible was foretold in Revelation 11. The seemingly almost successful effort to crush God's two witnesses, demanded special power from God in their quickening and exaltation. Nay, even before the devil's wrath was manifest, God's servants were breaking ground in other lands. Ziegenbalg entered India in 1706. Schwartz followed him in 1750; and Zinzendorf, with his Moravian brethren, was sending out mission bands decades before Carey preached his historic sermon. The devil came too late in his efforts against the Bible; it was already multiplying in other tongues when the prince of evil made his master-stroke in France.

THE effort in France had no sooner spent its blind force than the great Bible societies in England, Scotland, America, and elsewhere followed, and faithful colporters went forth with their seed baskets laden with the Word of God, often watering the seed with their life-blood.

BUT the devil was not idle. He came in a new form — within the ranks of religion. He masquerades in canonicals in the sacred desk, under high-sounding titles, and "semilunar fardels," as Leonard Woolsey Bacon called them. In sly, suggestive, insidious, crafty ways, by honored names that have fallen under his spell, the devil has undermined faith in the Word of God, has blinded men to the creative and hence the regenerating power of God, to the origin of man, to the sinfulness of sin, to the primal fall, to the wages of sin — death, to the loss of all in sinning, to the necessity of a vicarious atonement in Christ, to a personal Father in God and personal Saviour in Jesus, to the all-sufficiency of the Word as a rule of faith and life, to the efficiency of its power in re-creating souls. Man is exalted to the place of God, and man's opinion above the Word. All honor to the noble souls who are attempting to stem the tide of theologico-scientific atheism that attempts to measure God by the human and present Him to needy souls under the empty names of Law and Nature.

BUT as God had a message to meet the flood of wickedness in the antediluvian world; as He had a message for sinful Sodom; as He had a message for Baal-worshiping Israel under Ahab; as He had a message for sin-saturated Nineveh; as He had a message for the "chosen people" incased in self-righteousness and formalism, previous to our Lord's first advent; as He had a message for tradition-ridden, tradition-darkened lands in the sixteenth century, — so God has a message for this sin-degenerating age of seductive infidelity. And as the great God of love found a Noah, an Abraham, an Elijah, a Jonah, a John the Baptist, a Luther, a Zwingle, a Wesley, so will He find men and women who are willing to bear this Message, willing to be mere voices crying

in the wilderness of error and confusion, willing to be nothing for Christ's sake that they may find all in Him.

EDITORIAL

THAT Message—threefold in its aspect—is outlined in Rev. 14: 6-14.

Its first phase presents the everlasting Gospel, the old reliable, never-failing Gospel, the power of God unto salvation to every one that believeth. It presents that Gospel free from all the errors of the centuries, from all the traditions of men. It contains no more than God's Gospel ever did, but it emphasizes the special truths for this time. Paul preached the Gospel, and warned of "judgment to come." See Acts 17: 31; 24: 25. The Message of the Revelation declares that the hour of God's "judgment is come." Rev. 14: 7. It is the Gospel of the kingdom of Christ, declaring the proximity of His coming reign. Matt. 24: 14. It gathers to itself all the light of past history, all the great lines and facts of prophecy, and focuses them upon this age; for at the close of the giving of this Message, the Son of Man comes to reap the harvest of the earth. Rev. 14: 14.

"The hour of His judgment is come," with all that it means, is the great fact of the Gospel Message for this day. The judgment involves the Judge, the rule of the judgment, His holy law (Rom. 2: 12; James 2: 8-12), the time of the judgment, the close of the age of grace, the results of the judgment, the apportionment of awards to be given by the coming King.

THAT Message emphasizes for this age three obligations: the fear, the loving reverence, of God; giving glory to God; the worship of God. Conversely it calls us from the fear of man and men, from human tradition and creed and custom, to the fear of God, the beginning of wisdom. "The fear of the Lord, that is wisdom; and to depart from evil is understanding." It calls from giving glory and honor to men which hides the glory and honor of God. God has magnified His Word above all His name. Ps. 138: 2. The Message bears another expression of the truth of the evangelical prophet: "All flesh is grass. . . . The grass withereth, the flower fadeth: but the Word of our God shall stand forever." It lays the glory of man in the dust, and exalts God alone as the Creator and Re-Creator of men. The worship of God is truest service. Says Jesus, "Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and Him only shalt thou serve." Matt. 4: 10. "Why call ye Me, Lord, Lord," said He on another occasion, "and do not the things which I say?" Luke 6: 46.

THE Message demands specifically the worship of the Maker of the heaven and earth. The everlasting Gospel brings us directly to the everlasting God, whose distinctive characteristic is creative power. Jer. 10: 10-12; Ps. 96: 5; Acts 17: 24-26; 14: 15. The wonderful works of God are made to be remembered by the institution and observance of the Sabbath day. Ps. 111: 4; Ex. 20: 8-11. The Message therefore demands the full acceptance of the Gospel, God's remedy for the restoration of man to perfect harmony with the will of God, to a loyalty tested and demonstrated by adherence to the Sabbath of the Lord by faith rather than the acceptance of a human substitute enforced by civil law. For the Sabbath is to us more than a day; it is a mighty test of principles, involving the loyalty and life of the religious bodies of Christendom, and the fate of the nations of the world, that are through the influence of religionists effecting the fatal union of Church and State. The Message calls from man to God. God gave it, is giving it, to heal the divisions of Christendom; and the second phase of the Message is a sad lament that Babylon is not healed, the divisions of Christendom continue, and fornication, union with the State, is poisoning the very life stream of Christendom.

WE appeal to you, reader, whoever you are, if this condition is not pre-eminently in evidence now. The old-time spirituality, the old-time conversions and revivals, are in the past, and the church is turning to the world, clamoring in legislative halls for State aid, federating together to obtain it, that certain dogmas may find support in civil law, among which is the sabbath of tradition in the place of the Sabbath of the Bible. Is not the appeal to the State a sad confession of loss of power in the Gospel of Christ?

AGAINST all coming Church-and-State union, against all perpetuation of the beast power or its prerogatives or control in matters religious, the third phase of the Message warns us with warning so vivid, with penalties so fearful, that its like is not found elsewhere in the Word of God.

IN the first phase of this great threefold Message is found its great positive truth, represented as going to the world with wonderful rapidity, sounded out so strong and clear in mid-heaven that all may hear and know. That Message is developing a class described in verse 12, living upon the earth when the Son of Man comes to reap its harvest: "Here is the patience of the saints: here are they that keep the commandments of God, and the faith of Jesus." In other words, the Message develops Sabbath-keeping Christians, Christians whose faith in Christ leads to specific, faithful obedience to all the commandments of God, as did the same faith in the life of the Master on earth.

IN the face of every temporal interest of the natural man, against all the unpopularity of truth which involves a cross, the Message has developed and sounded far forward. It has more than doubled its adherents and facilities every decade of its existence. The still strong, active manager of one of its large publishing houses, forty years ago operated their first power press, which, running half time, printed in one language all the literature of this people. Now the publishing houses number 27, the periodicals 126, other separate publications in bound books and tracts 2,000, printed in 68 different languages. Its operations have extended to the great, dark, needy lands of earth. And everywhere the bearers of the Message go, they find the Master's footprints before them, find souls longing for the Message, or living the Message, who have not seen a white instructor in the Gospel. Despite the obstacles, despite the opposition to truth, despite the weakness of men, the Message has progressed. It was to go to all; it is going to all. The old soldier of Christ needs its vivifying power. The weak-hearted, doubting Christian needs it. It is equally applicable to the darkest heathen in the heart of Africa.

KNOWING the Master, knowing His Message, knowing its power to change hearts, we must give it. But even tho we refused, it would go forward, for the life and truth of God are in it. Should men hold their peace, the very stones upon which we tread in the streets would cry out. It is God's Message; it is God's time to give it.

The Message meets opposition. We are sorry. It is because men do not know it; if they would but study and yield to its truth, they would be charmed by its simplicity and clearness, awed by its wondrous scope and depth, won by its love. We know that it converts souls to God and righteousness, and therefore we herald it to the world. It unifies. It has gathered from every creed, every land, every nation, every race; and it blends all into unity of faith and spirit. To God be all the glory. Will you not help us? "Come thou with us, and we will do thee good; for the Lord hath spoken good concerning Israel."

THE closing of the Message will be glorious under the latter rain. The mighty outpouring of the Spirit of God, the plentiful showers of which the foretaste is already given, will do quick work for God. Now, now is the time to work for souls. Now is the time to forsake that which fetters, binds, hinders, cripples, kills, and give one's self to God for humanity. God is calling for us and our means. He is calling you. Millions of souls dying in darkness are calling. Will you not respond?