There is a story about a young preacher that in 1995, he was in Glasgow Scotland. He wrote: I was living in a Center City Hotel. One morning I got up and decided that I was going to jog over into the south side of the city of Glasgow. I ran across the river Clyde on a bridge, and as I jogged through the south side of Glasgow I was impressed. Corner after corner, and on those corners sat big beautiful stone gothic Christian churches. They all had one thing in common. They were all boarded up. And I remember thinking, ’What happened?’ I fantasized, ’What was Christmas Eve like in 1901 in that church?’ I bet they were packed out. I bet you this was a going show. What happened between 1901 and 1995? I don’t know. But I do know, is that Christ removed their lampstand.
At the end of World War II, Christ came this close to removing the lampstand of from many of the Christian Churches. This close. And he can come and do that again, if we should ever get so presumptuous. We should never get so captivated with all of our good stuff that is going on here to the point where we let our first love slip to the side. We are a chosen people, we have the message of Good News and we should never hide it under a bushel. We should never be content doing the day-in and day-out work for the church, but rather have a heart burning desire to do an everlasting ongoing work for Christ. The words spoken to the Church of Ephesus 2000 years ago were true then, and are truly spoken to the Adventist Church today. We should never loose sight.