Sucessors to the the personnel of Standard-Bearers the worker body of this movement has profoundly changed since our early days. None who passed through the crisis of 1844, and the formative decade of the third angel's message that followed, are with us today. And few, if any, who were active when the General Conference was formed in 1863 are now living. The same is true of those who were in service when our first foreign missionary went abroad in 1874. Even those in service at the time of the 1888 Minneapolis issue are few, and the same is true to a degree of those yet active who were in the Battle Creek crisis of 1902. A new body of workers has succeeded the old standard-bearers.
Furthermore, the large majority of our workers throughout the world never had any close working contact with Mrs. E. G. White, as her living counsels guided, spurred, and corrected those who carried the responsibility of the movement, prior to her death in 1915. This was a priceless privilege, and likewise developed a relationship toward divine counsel that was invaluable in successful service for God. Many of our present conference presidents, evangelists, editors, writers, and other leaders are without that stabilizing influence, character training, and principle development which are implicit in such contact and relationships.
Yes, the old standard-bearers are almost gone Successfully grappling with those great issues did something for the pioneers of this message that reviewing their history, or academic training alone, can never do. Indeed, the latter sometimes tends to neutralize it. We have been running to no small degree on their momentum, so far as organization, departmentalization, general procedure, and objective are concerned.
Sobering thoughts come as the inescapable accompaniment: Are we who bear the responsibilities of the movement today as stalwart, tried, true, and proved as were our spiritual forefathers? Is the movement and the message as safe in our hands today? Are we as fundamentally loyal as they ? Do we know our truth as well as they did, and are we the personal Bible students that they were? Are we as willing to sacrifice, to suffer hardship or persecution? Are we, without the living gift to correct us today, as sedulous in studying and following the written counsels left for our safeguarding?
In meeting the unprecedented issues of the present and the immediate future, will we be as wise and loyal and as safe and aggressive as they ? Are we prone, at times, to substitute expediency for principle? Are we inclined to be more superficial in our judgment ? Do we have as deep convictions? Are we willing to stand alone for our convictions, if need be?
We face a new world situation. The greatest and gravest responsibility in the history of the church rests upon us. We are con-. fronted not only with unprecedented crises and readjustments, but with the necessity of finishing a task now infinitely more complex and nearly a century more advanced. The present issue is the supreme challenge of the centuries. It calls for a daring, an enterprise, a wisdom, an aggressiveness, a sacrifice, and a spiritual vision and power that surpass every demand of the past. Will we prove worthy of the heritage of the early standard-bearers and God's trust ? We must not, we will not, fail Him!
L. E. F.