Can God Work? by Editor

The Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Mar 14, 1865

Can God Work?

By Editor

THERE are no limitations to God's power; but there are conditions which determine the direction in which he will manifest it. He cannot smile upon unrighteousness, nor uphold iniquity in individuals or nations. If they would have his blessing they must turn from their wickedness. If they do evil, they must expect his judgments. This general rule the Lord laid down by the prophet more than six hundred years before Christ: "At what instant I shall speak concerning a nation, and concerning a kingdom, to pluck up and to pull down, and to destroy it; if that nation against whom I have pronounced, turn from their evil, I will repent of the evil that I thought to do unto them. And at what instant I shall speak concerning a nation, and concerning a kingdom, to build and to plant it; if it do evil in my sight that it obey not my voice, then I will repent of the good wherewith I said I would benefit them." Jer. xviii, 7-10.

But God, in his workings in the earth, is not confined to his people, nor does he work exclusively with them. He rules in the kingdoms of men, and uses whomever his purposes require. When the Canaanites had filled up the measure of their abominations, God employed Israel as the ministers of his vengeance, to rid the earth of their foul presence; and he took the responsibility of all the lives they destroyed, and the blood they shed, in executing criminals against himself.

Israel sins and departs from the Lord, and he commissions the king of Babylon to inflict upon them his sore judgments; not because Babylon was the especial favorite of Heaven; for when God had accomplished through that kingdom his designs against Israel, it was itself punished for its own sins.

The seventy years of the captivity of Israel draw near their close. The bands of their oppression must be loosed. Babylon will not loose them; for Babylon had thought that its own sword had achieved its victories; and it dreamed in its pride and arrogance of holding them forever. What does God do? He summons the Mede and Persian, who fall like a mighty avalanche upon the haughty kingdom, and the pride of its power is broken, the crown of its glory taken away, and Cyrus, in obedience to the divine purpose, issues a proclamation for the return of Israel to their native land.

Nor does God make use of his people alone in imparting instruction to the children of men; for to Nebuchadnezzar, a heathen king, God gave the first great comprehensive symbol of the world's history from the days of the first universal empire, to the end of probationary time. Yet he does nothing with which his people are not concerned, if not in some way directly connected. For though a Pharaoh dreams, a Joseph must explain; and though to Nebuchadnezzar was given a symbol of earthly governments for years to come, Daniel must come in to give the interpretation. And though there have been commotions in the earth, kingdoms arising and falling, it has been but the casting down and setting up by the Lord to open a way for his people—God going before his church, like a pillar of cloud by day, and fire by night, to pilot them through their fearful journey of six thousand years, in a world blighted by the curse, and made perilous by sin.

The few instances to which we have referred, and of which the history of the world presents almost an unbroken series, are sufficient to show God's methods of dealing with the race, and the principle and conditions upon which he specially interposes in human affairs.

The time has come, as we believe, when the special interposition of God in national affairs in behalf of his people is again needed. The mighty struggle of our nation is retarding seriously the work of present truth in the land, and threatening to stop it almost entirely.

Is the state of the nation such that God can work in its behalf, and for his people?

We go back two and three years, and what do we see? Traitors in authority on the Union side, rebels at heart occupying places of trust in the Union army, plotters to treason holding by swarms the Federal offices, generals in the army returning to rebel masters the escaped bondmen, the rights of the oppressed slave ignored and trampled upon by those who had the right and the power to vindicate and defend them, the nation slow to acknowledge their guilt, and to see the hand of God in their calamities, and laboring to leave untouched the great sin which was the occasion of all their woes. Could God bless and work for a nation in such a state as this? Let the almost unbroken succession of defeats, misfortunes, disasters, and evils accumulating to the Union cause on every hand, answer. Traitors were made glad. Enemies of the Union, even those occupying its places of trust and profit, could scarce conceal their joy. Lovers of their country, of humanity, liberty, and right, were sad and despondent, and the day of triumph and cessation of trouble was so rapidly receding as to occasion with many most serious apprehensions that it would never be reached.

But the times are changed somewhat; and how is it now? We have good reason to believe that Federal offices, especially those of influence and power, are pretty thoroughly purged of villainous sympathizers with slavery and treason. The Executive has issued his proclamation emancipating the slaves of the rebellious States. Three of the border States where slavery was left to the disposal of the people, have decreed its immediate abolition. Slaves are no longer returned to their masters, but wherever our armies touch, thither freedom comes. The rights and the manhood of the slave have been to a great extent recognized, notwithstanding all that yet remains to be done in that direction, ere the demands of justice are fully met. The nation has been, though slowly, committing itself on the side of the right. And to crown the whole, the national Congress has passed the Constitutional amendment, by which the Constitution of the United States is made to expressly and forever prohibit slavery on every inch of territory over which it has jurisdiction. A concurrence of three-fourths of the States is necessary ere this can take effect, and though it is probably lost for the present, because Delaware, Kentucky, and New Jersey, have rejected it, still the good intentions of Congress, and the will of the nation as expressed by them, stand the same.

Upon these actions and efforts it seems that God must look with approbation. And we now ask, Is not the nation taking a position where God can favor it, and crown its efforts with success? Let the late Union victories, and the rebel disasters, answer. Let the crumbling power of the Confederacy answer. Let the fall of Savannah, Wilmington, and Charleston, answer. Let the giant grip which Grant holds upon the demon of rebellion before Petersburg and Richmond, while Sherman by his triumphant march through the heart of Georgia and South Carolina, deals death-blows to its very vitals, answer.

What the course of events in the future may be, we cannot tell. We pray for the holding of the winds, the cessation of this strife, the relaxation of this pressure from the nation and the people of God, till the final work of mercy can be accomplished, and the servants of God be sealed. A series of successes, unbroken and remarkable, have of late crowned the Union cause; and it would seem that a few more signal victories would break the power of the rebellion beyond recovery, and close the strife, at least so far as it interferes with the progress of the truth. We would not speak too definitely. We only suggest that Providence seems to point in this direction for a fulfillment of Rev. vii, 3, while the consideration that the nation has taken such steps as would make it seem in harmony with the attributes of God to grant it success, is calculated in no small degree to strengthen that faith.

Meanwhile strong in our trust that God will work in his own good way and time, we wait for the speedy holding of the winds, the last loud proclamation of the truth, and the not-far-distant consolation of Israel.