Beware of Any Time Setting
167
Improve Present Opportunities
This is the work in which we also are to be engaged. Instead
of living in expectation of some special season of excitement, we
are wisely to improve present opportunities, doing that which must
be done in order that souls may be saved. Instead of exhausting the
powers of our mind in speculations in regard to the times and seasons
which the Lord has placed in His own power, and withheld from men,
we are to yield ourselves to the control of the Holy Spirit, to do present
duties, to give the bread of life, unadulterated with human opinions, to
souls who are perishing for the truth.
Satan is ever ready to fill the mind with theories and calculations
that will divert men from the present truth, and disqualify them for the
giving of the third angel’s message to the world. It has ever been thus;
for our Saviour often had to speak reprovingly to those who indulged
in speculations and were ever inquiring into those things which the
Lord had not revealed. Jesus had come to earth to impart important
truth to men, and He wished to impress their minds with the necessity
of receiving and obeying His precepts and instructions, of doing their
present duty, and His communications were of an order that imparted
knowledge for their immediate and daily use.
Jesus said: “This is life eternal, that they might know thee the only
[187]
true God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent” (
John 17:3
). All
that was done and said had this one object in view—to rivet truth in
their minds that they might attain unto everlasting life. Jesus did not
come to astonish men with some great announcement of some special
time when some great event would occur, but He came to instruct and
save the lost. He did not come to arouse and gratify curiosity; for He
knew that this would but increase the appetite for the curious and the
marvelous. It was His aim to impart knowledge whereby men might
increase in spiritual strength, and advance in the way of obedience and
true holiness. He gave only such instruction as could be appropriated
to the needs of their daily life, only such truth as could be given to
others for the same appropriation.
He did not make new revelations to men, but opened to their under-
standing truths that had long been obscured or misplaced through the
false teaching of the priests and teachers. Jesus replaced the gems of
divine truth in their proper setting, in the order in which they had been