Gradual Backsliding

Seventh-day Adventist Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Apr 20, 1882

Gradual Backsliding.

GREAT temptations are not the most dangerous to Christian people. We are not likely at once to deny the Lord or to commit flagrant violations of law. There is more danger of yielding here a little and there a little from the right. One does not become a Sabbath-breaker or profane, because any one great temptation is too strong for him, but by a gradual process. He does not become cold in his service through any sudden chill, but by first neglecting one duty and then another. The disciples slept during Christ's agony before they forsook him and fled. Peter followed afar off before he denied him. Those who would serve faithfully must avoid the beginning of evil.

The same thing is true of churches. They do not become cold and negligent, or formal, or loose in doctrine or practice, by any sudden transition. On the contrary, the change is usually unnoticed, save by those who recollect the past, and put it side by side with the present. They remember how the prayer-meeting was first neglected, and then the night service; how family worship became less common, and the Sabbath-school less interesting; how the young people drifted away; how infidel ideas crept in. Christian people, and especially those who, as officers in the church, have accepted a special responsibility, need to watch the beginnings of evil.—Journal and Messenger.