Patience in Waiting for Christ
Moses went up into the mount to commune with God. He was absent from his people forty days. That forty days was too much for the patience of the fickle Israelites. The solemn impressions which they must have received from the sublime scenes they had witnessed around Sinai, as God with an audible voice proclaimed in their ears his holy law, could not last them forty days. Before that time had expired, they were effaced from their hearts. Before that time expired their patience was exhausted. They revolted. They forgot the majesty of God. With an infatuated incredulity they gave Moses to the winds, saying that they wot not what was become of him. They erected the golden calf, and worshiped it as the God that had brought them up from the land of Egypt. Could they have given a little more weight to the things they had just experienced, and to that added a little larger share of patience, they might have been saved from their apostasy. So it seems the church has need of patience at the present day. Our Mediator has entered within the second vail into audience so to speak, with God the Father. He has gone thither to cleanse the Sanctuary, blot out the sins of his people and receive his kingdom and his subjects. Let us not lose sight of him or his work. Let not your patience exhaust by exercise, nor your belief grow unsettled, your faith waver, or your hope grow dim by delay. Our past experience, as the true Advent body, is terra firma. We can look back upon it with confidence and pleasure as the work of God and a fulfillment of prophecy. It brought us in 1844 to the end of the latest prophetic period—to the entrance of our High Priest into the Most Holy. And now while this great work is progressing, let us neither speak nor act as though we were at a loss to know our position, as though we "wot not what had become of him." Patience and perseverance will secure the blessing. Erect no golden calf in your affections; and when he who is to come the second time, shall appear without sin unto the salvation of all those who are looking for him, you may appear before him with confidence and joy.