MY LORD DELAYETH HIS COMING

Seventh-Day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Thursday, January 8, 1880

FromThe Review and Herald, Vol. 55, No. 2

MY LORD DELAYETH HIS COMING.

Some persons are so anxious to find fault with the position and work of S. D. Adventists that they affect great anxiety, lest they be found saying, “My Lord delayeth his coming,” and so suffer a terrible disappointment by not being ready to meet him when he comes. They charge S. D. Adventists with saying, “My Lord delayeth his coming,” because they are entering upon certain enterprises which they believe must be accomplished before the Lord comes, and because in their faith there are some final links of prophecy to be developed before the chain is complete. The persons who make this charge have themselves no particular enterprises on hand and no specific work to do, so far as their actions would indicate. With them, no more remains to be done (notwithstanding certain views about the return of the Jews and the age to come), and the position they intimate is the right one to occupy is to sit in expectant inactivity, ready for the Lord to come at any moment.

For the sake of those who may sincerely fear that S. D. Adventists are in danger in the direction above mentioned, we offer a thought concerning it. If, then, S. D. Adventists are saying, “My Lord delayeth his coming,” how are they saying it? They are, to be sure, maintaining some important enterprises, publishing extensively, organizing missionary work in home and foreign fields, conducting a Health Institute for the theoretical and practical promulgation of reformatory ideas on the subjects of health, temperance, and care for the sick, and maintaining a College for the education of men for future labor. And they are doing all this because they believe that a crisis between truth and error is soon coming, and that the world is to be warned and tested by the very message which they have to preach. And to carry these enterprises forward to a full degree of efficiency, must, of course, take some time. But are they, in these things, saying, “My Lord delayeth his coming,” and putting themselves in a position in which they would be unprepared to meet him should he come before the result to which they look is reached?

What, according to the prophecy, is the evil servant led to do by conceiving the idea that the Lord delays his coming? Does he say, “Now my Lord delays his coming, and I have more time than I expected, so I will go to work earnestly to bring my fellow-servants up to the Bible standard on the question of restraining perverted appetite, and will exhort them to sacrifice means and make personal effort in the cause of the Lord; and I will lay broader plans to be carried out as speedily as possible, to warn the people still more extensively in regard to the coming of my Master, so that they may be prepared to meet him?”

Does the evil servant talk and act in this manner? Not by any means. On the contrary, he loses sight of all these things, and begins to smite his fellow-servants, and to eat and drink with the drunken. Are S. D. Adventists doing this? Which looks the most like eating and drinking with the drunken? the radical temperance work of this people, or the course of some of those who make this charge against us, who, to gratify a depraved appetite, are still filling their systems with the scrofula of the swine, and their mouths with the stench of tobacco? Which looks most like smiting their fellow-servants? the course of those who try to tear down the work of those servants, and turn people away from whatever truth they may possess, well knowing that they will not receive it from any other quarter, as these very persons are doing toward S. D. Adventists, or simply striking at those evils by which the soul and body are defiled, and the church destroyed, as these latter aim to do? We leave the reader to judge.

But one thing, at least, it is safe to say; namely, that it is not by work and consecration, and large plans to prepare people for the second coming of Christ, though these plans may be larger than can be carried out before he comes, that any one says, “My Lord delayeth his coming.” It is not labor and work that says this. It is not activity, and zeal, and sacrifice to prepare people for the second coming of Christ, though there may not be time to carry out all the plans in view, that will unfit a person to meet the Lord when he does come. And between the two positions, that of sitting perched upon the stool of do-nothing, idly waiting with folded hands for the Lord to come, and that of special labor and activity with reference to that coming—give us the latter, a thousand to one; even though the Lord should come before the work intended is accomplished.

In any event, let us be found working; working in view of Christ’s coming; working to prepare as many as possible for that event. This we imagine is to be giving the household meat in due season. Idleness destroys spirituality as rust corrodes the polished metal. The reward is to be according to the work. And we do not conceive that the great danger of S. D. Adventists lies in the direction of their taking upon their hands too large a work, and then laboring with their might to do it. Are not these acts rather saying to all around, Do not draw back to perdition, but believe (with a live faith which shows itself in works) to the saving of the soul; “for yet a little while and He that shall come, will come, and will not tarry?”