April 22, 1902

“The Message of the Spring” The Advent Review and Sabbath Herald 79, 16.

EJW

E. J. Waggoner

Why do we never doubt, no matter how backward the season, nor how long and tedious the delay, the ultimate springing forth and unfolding of the hidden life in nature? It is because we know that life is there, in power that no adverse conditions can ultimately control. We know that the apparent death of winter is not death indeed; it has been hallowed into sleep by the power of Him who is the resurrection and the life of all things.ARSH April 22, 1902, page 9.3

“Not dead, but sleeping,” He proclaims over the seemingly lifeless earth; and “if thou wilt believe, thou shalt see the glory of God” in the restoration of all things. The curse which blights the earth; withering the flowers, stripping the trees, and casting all nature into this death-like sleep, shall not for ever hold it in bondage. Its cruel chains have been burst asunder by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. Every spring season is a parable telling that the sealed stone of His earthly prison has been rolled away, and the tree of life has sprung forth a new, to blossom and bud and fill the face of the world with fruit. In “the gospel according to the winter,” we read of death and darkness-the story of the frost. But “the gospel according to the spring” follows with the renewal of light and life-the story of the resurrection; the triumphant assurance that “death is swallowed up in victory!” It is the gospel of hope. By it we are “begotten again unto a lively hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.”ARSH April 22, 1902, page 9.4

Why, then, should we despair or grieve, though the marks of the curse may be never so apparent in our bodies; though He who has the power of death holds us with the cords of our sins, or with the death-like grip of disease? Christ has the keys of death and the grave, that are able to set us free, and He says: “O death, I will be thy plagues; O grave, I will be thy destruction.” The decree has gone forth; death’s doom is writ; and we believe we shall see the glory of God in our emancipation. The power of His life is even now, though unseen, working deliverance for us, and seeming delay will but emphasize the transformation.ARSH April 22, 1902, page 9.5

“His going forth as the morning.” He will swallow up death in victory, and wipe the tears from off all faces. This is the message of the brave snowdrop, hopeful crocus, and joyous daffodil, and of the buds now everywhere swelling and bursting with the life that they cannot contain.ARSH April 22, 1902, page 9.6

The spring is also a promise of the final complete restoration of the whole earth through the all-conquering life of the Creator. When He thus makes all things new, her wilderness will be like Eden, and her desert like the garden of the Lord. “The wilderness and the solitary place shall be glad for them, and the desert shall rejoice and blossom as the rose.”ARSH April 22, 1902, page 9.7

“Come, for creation groans,
Impatient of Thy stay,
Worn-out by these long years of ill,
These ages of delay.
“Come, spoil the strong man’s house,
Bind him and cast him thence:
Show Thyself stronger than the strong,
Thyself Omnipotence.
“Come, Lord, and take away
The curse, the sin, the stain;
And make this blighted world of ours
Thine own fair world again.”ARSH April 22, 1902, page 9.8