Work of the Gospel by Editor

Pacific Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Oakland, California · Feb 6, 1879

Work of the Gospel.

By Editor

ON every side the discussion of the advent goes on, and we rejoice. Paul was pleased to know, that Christ was preached, even "of contention." Though we cannot indorse all that is said by those who favor the doctrine of the pre-millennial advent, we are right glad to have them set this truth before those who might not be reached by other means. A correspondent of the Evangel, of San Francisco, thus replies to another writer in that paper:—

"Has our confidence been too strong in the Holy Spirit? Is it true that He must be set aside? Is His work almost ended? Must we abandon the hope that under His dispensation the nations are not to be shaken and the world not to be transformed?"

These questions reveal the fact that our brother is a post-Millennialist, and that he expects the whole world to be converted to Christ by the preaching of the gospel. Will our brother please show us a single passage in the Bible to prove that the world is to be converted before Christ comes? Will he tell us where to find the passage that teaches that the church is to embrace all nations before Christ comes? Does not the word ecclesia mean "those called out?" Does not Simeon declare "how God at the first did visit the Gentiles to take out of them a people for his name?"

"Our confidence in the Holy Spirit," has not "been too strong"—nay, not half strong enough. Neither "is it true that He, must be set aside." But we must "abandon the hope that under his dispensation, the nations are to be shaken and the world transformed," for the reason that God never promised to transform the world simply by the agency of the Holy Ghost without the personal return of Christ. On the other hand God has plainly foretold that the present dispensation is to end in apostasy. Every dispensation in the past has ended in apostasy, and the present will end in the same way. The dispensation of Eden ended in apostasy, curses and judgments; the Antediluvian dispensation ended with the deluge that overwhelmed the world; the Patriarchal dispensation ended amid the plagues of Egypt, with the children of Israel fleeing for dear life, and dying in the wilderness by millions; the Mosaic dispensation ended in the total apostasy of all the tribes—it went down in idolatry, and was ground to atoms by the iron heel of Babylonian, Medo-Persian, Grecian and Roman despotism; the Messianic dispensation ended in the rejection of Christ, and his crucifixion, and as judgment on the Jews, which has sent them as outcasts among all nations. The gospel dispensation is sure to end in "tribulation such as was not in the beginning of the world to this time; no, nor ever shall be."

Now I do not deny God's power to convert all nations in a day by the preaching of the gospel. It is not a question of God's power, but of God's purpose. The Bible is not a revelation of what God can possibly do, but of what He will do. The Bible is His revealed will, not His revealed power merely. True, he has said, "Go ye into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature," etc., but He nowhere says that every creature will receive it and be saved. "Go teach all nations" by no means implies that a hundredth part of mankind will believe. God has nowhere said that all nations will be converted and then the Son of man will come, but "this gospel of the kingdom shall be preached in all the world for a witness unto all nations, then shall the end come." Not for the conversion of all nations, but for a witness, and then shall the end come. God alone in His infinite wisdom can tell how much the gospel must be preached in all nations to constitute a witness, a savor of life or death; hence He alone knows when the end will come. But we are to go forth as missionaries of the cross and preach the gospel among all nations, and so "hasten the coming" (2 Pet. 3:12) of our Lord Jesus Christ. Is the church a failure? No, for the reason that it will accomplish just what God intended it to accomplish, viz., to preach the gospel to all nations as a witness. Of course God desires men to believe the gospel and be saved by it, but if they will not believe, it will stand as a witness against them. Is the Holy Ghost a failure? No. But man is a failure, and every dispensation of God, when left to man's responsibility to carry it forward, even with the Holy Ghost to aid him, has failed of saving the world.

Do the tares and wheat growing together, until harvest, look much like the transformation of the world by the gospel? When the seed sown by the wayside, on stony ground, and among thorns, all fails, and only that which falls into good ground brings forth; in other words, when only one part in four yields anything, does that look like transforming the world by sowing gospel seed? When God plainly says "that day shall not come except there come a falling away first, and that man of sin be revealed, the son of perdition," "whom the Lord will consume with the spirit of his mouth and shall destroy with the brightness of his coming." Does that look as if the world was to be transformed by the preaching of the gospel? Does that falling away look like victory or apostasy?"