A Message for To-Day by Editor

Pacific Press Publishing Association · Mountain View, California · Dec 17, 1912

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 39, No. 49.

A Message for To-Day

By Editor

GOD has had a message for every age, for every generation, for every world crisis. He reads lightly, superficially, or blindly the lessons of history who can not see in it the marvelous working of the invisible hand of God, molding, shaping the destinies of nations, so far as it could be done without compelling or coercing the human will. He does not know the true principles of reform who can not trace the true reformations among men back to the principles of the living Word of God among men.

A crisis came into this world when sin entered. God gave His everlasting gospel, and those who embraced it entered into His everlasting covenant of grace. A crisis came sixteen centuries later. The world became so full of wickedness that in mercy to untold generations the earth must be cleansed. Therefore the Deluge, and therefore the mighty message to that generation, preached by Enoch, Methuselah, and Noah for one hundred twenty years.

When the fulness of time came, God called Abraham from Ur of Chaldea, a missionary to Palestine, that he might preach God’s message there before the cup of the Amorite was full for judgment.

When the four hundred years of pilgrimage and bondage of Abraham’s seed had ended in Egypt, God sent Moses and Aaron with a mighty message of deliverance — deliverance from sin for Egypt had it been accepted.

“When the fulness of the time came, God sent forth His Son, born of a woman, born under the law, that He might redeem them that were under the law, that we might receive the adoption of sons;” and He preceded that advent by the mighty “voice of one crying in the wilderness,” in the person of John the Baptist. “Prepare ye the way of the Lord, make His paths straight.”

The above are examples of how God has sent His saving message for every age, always the everlasting gospel, always adapted to the very generation in which it was given, always demanding present faith to grasp that present truth.

These days are days of evil, days of opportunity, days pregnant with possibilities, days of doubt and stress and trial and crisis. Well did the old prophet express it, “Multitudes, multitudes in the valley of decision! for the day of Jehovah is near in the valley of decision.” Joel 3: 14. In such a time as this, a time when every human hope is under attack, when every “wind of doctrine” is blowing, when every creed of man is questioned, will God leave the world without a message? — Nay, it is unbelievable. It is contrary to God’s character; it is contrary to the analogy of all His past dealings with men; it is contrary to the revelation of His Word, which discloses just such a message. We have been presenting it in the past, we shall still present it to our readers in all its many phases. We are not doing this for the pecuniary profit there is in it, nor to gather converts to a creed, nor to oppose some one else, nor to exploit a theory. We are endeavoring to proclaim it because it is God’s message for this time, for this generation; and it has in it all the potency of God for the salvation of the souls that receive its words of life.

It presents no human towers of strength, save the divine-human Jesus, mighty to save.

It knows no compelling power, save that of honest conviction and the love of Christ.

It has demonstrated its power to bless and save in thousands of instances, and therefore we commend it to you. “O taste and see that the Lord is good.” w.