Aflame!—How can we be so calm and dispassionate in proclaiming the mighty life-and-death message committed to our hands? Has its vast, overtowering import really gripped us? How can we be so stolid in the face of a bewildered, discouraged world stumbling on in darkness to its death, when we are bearers of God's provision of salvation that alone will save? How can we keep back the tears when pleading with men to accept the one message that offers hope and life and redemption to man? Intense earnestness of evangelical fervor, blended with scholarly soundness, should mark all our public presentations. But the fire must first burn within our own souls before it can catch aflame in the souls of others. We need to pray for a new vision. We need to seek for a new and vivid realization for ourselves, and for a new power to so proclaim it to others that they will be constrained to accept—fleeing, as it were, for their very lives.
Details!--A disproportionate emphasis upon obscure points of doctrine and an undue stressing of the inconsequentials of prophetic interpretation create inevitable clashes of opinion. This not infrequently leads to controversy without any justifiable basis—with a dogmatic assumption and rigidity on the one hand, and an unwillingness to be lined up and adjudged by such unsound and unjustifiable criteria on the other. Such minor and often hazy items should be held in their relatively subordinate place without dogmatic rigidity, so that additional light may be discerned and clarification may come through unhampered consideration. Rigid adherence to preconceived opinion on secondary details shuts off the promised rays of added light that we are assured will come through deeper study, wider comprehension, and the historical fulfillment of the yet future phases of prophecies already crystal clear in their rugged outlines.
Opportunity!!—A fourfold result is clearly emerging from present-day world conditions. As to our own people, it is (I) driving them to their knees in heart-searching, renewed consecration, sacrificial giving and service; while it is (2) separating the careless and worldly from the church through increasing difficulties concerning the Sabbath and related questions. In the world about, it is (3) driving great sections of disillusioned humanity away from the love of the world, its follies and its pleasures, and from dependence upon its crumbling stability ; and it is (4) opening the eyes of multitudes to the utter fallacy of an imminent temporal millennium, a growing world betterment, and an impending universal peace and unity. This time of disillusionment is the golden hour for advancing the message of the second advent and the last reformation. Conditions may seem difficult today, but they are destined to grow worse, not better. Increased isolation, financial restrictions, and breakdown of international relationships will create increasing problems and perplexities. We must press our commissioned task with divine intensity. The hour draws on apace when no man can work.
Consistency! — W e should cease proclaiming to the world that "Seventh-day Adventists have no creed," if we do have a creed in fact—as some complacently affirm. We should at any cost be honest and consistent in our declarations. Our historic position is either in vogue today, or it is not. We either do, or we do not, have a creed, a codifying, binding statement of belief accepted generally as the criteria of admission, discipline, and dismissal—such, for instance, as appears in our Year Book, upon consent to our denial of which members are received into or expelled from membership. There should be no confusion here.
Inexcusable!—Ministerial ignorance that insults the ear of the intelligent hearer, discredits the church, and dishonors truth. Misstatements in the field of history, science, archeology, astronomy, or Biblical languages are inexcusable—with all the available facilities of learning and the dependable books on every hand. Pseudoscholarly allusion, for example, to the meaning of the "original" Biblical text by those who can scarcely decipher one Hebrew or Greek letter from another, is most unbecoming. Those who presume to speak in the name of the God of all truth in this day of general learning, especially in our city congregations where they are surrounded by many trained minds, should be able to command the respect of their hearers. Wycliffe, Luther, and the great instruments of divine use in the past, were intellectual giants that commanded the respect even of their enemies by their sheer knowledge of the various branches of learning, apart from the distinctive principles of enunciated and applied truth. The demands of this hour are not lower or less exacting.
L. E.F.
