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The Old Stones Still Speak

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Dec. 31 - The Old Stones Still Speak

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And those twelve stones, which they took out of the Jordan, Joshua set up in Gilgal. And he said to the people of Israel, "When your children ask their fathers in time to come, 'What do these stones mean?' then you shall let your children know, 'Israel passed over this Jordan on dry ground.'" Joshua 4:20-22, RSV.

We began our year's journey through Adventist history with this text. It is no accident that we are closing with it. God's truth hasn't changed with the passage of time. The Bible is a historical book. It traces the great points in salvation history from the creation to the Second Advent.

Thus the Bible is a book of remembrance of God's miraculous leading of His people. And that leading is not over. It continues on and will do so until the final victory has been
won.

It is when churches lose the significance and reality of God's leading in their past history that they are in trouble. Just as it was so in Bible times, so it is today.

And it was no accident that the aging Ellen White alerted her readers to the topic: "In reviewing our past history," she penned, "having traveled over every step of advance to our present standing, I can say, Praise God! As I see what the Lord has wrought, I am filled with astonishment, and with confidence in Christ as leader. We have nothing to fear for the future, except as we shall forget the way the Lord has led us, and His teaching in our past history" (LS 196).

Lest we forget! As Seventh-day Adventists, we have nothing to fear for the future unless we forget God's guidance in our past.

The pathway from the past indicates the way into the future. When Christians forget God's past leading, they also lose their sense of identity in the present. And that loss of identity causes a loss of mission and purpose. After all, if you don't know who you are in relation to God's plan, what do you have to tell the world?

Christian history, we noted 364 days ago, is littered with religious bodies who have forgotten where they have come from, and, as a result, have no direction for the future.

Now, at the end of the year, we know that Adventist history is littered with dead and dying bodies, all of which have forgotten their prophetic past.

That forgetting is one of Seventh-day Adventism's greatest temptations. But we have nothing to fear for the future, unless we forget!


 

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But we have nothing to fear for the future, unless we forget!

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