Be a Bible Christian by M. A. M.

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Jan 21, 1875

Be a Bible Christian.

By M. A. M.

EIGHTEEN hundred and seventy-four is in the past. The old year has given place to the new, and fair and unspotted lie before us the unsoiled pages of the year eighteen hundred and seventy-five. As we look back over the past year, we see it strewed all along with broken resolutions, and we have oftener been overcome than the overcomer. Shall we not do better this year than we did last, dear reader? If so, let us resolve to be Bible Christians; that is, do what the Bible requires, avoid what the Bible forbids, and accept all that the Bible promises.

Young Christians are apt to look around and observe how others, professing Christianity, live; how far, and in what thing, they conform to the world; what duties are considered important, and how many it will answer to omit. From this they form a judgment as to how much is expected of them; and if they succeed in meeting these expectations, they are very apt to think they have done enough. They may not do all this deliberately, but they naturally and imperceptibly fall in with the current. Never was there a greater mistake. It seems to me that of all the dangers which beset the path of the young Christian, this is the greatest. Let each young convert take the Bible for his guide, resolving in the strength of the Lord to be a Bible Christian. Do not look to this or that professor as an example, but to a more perfect pattern—our divine Lord.

The twelfth chapter of Romans, the thirteenth chapter of the first book of Corinthians, and the Sermon on the Mount, give a full-length portraiture of the Bible Christian. No doubt you have read them many times, but let me ask you to read them again. Perhaps after reading these scriptures carefully, you are ready to shrink back, and to say, “How can I undertake to come up to so high a standard.” True, the standard is high, but our best efforts fall so much below what we undertake that if the standard be not an elevated one we shall never attain to any degree of excellence in the Christian course.

Soon the heavens will depart as a scroll when it is rolled together, and all, both small and great, shall stand before God, and be judged by the statute book—the Bible. If we expect to stand acquitted in that great day, we must now be Bible Christians.

M. A. M.