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Affliction Teaches Us to Long for Heaven, March 8
For our light affliction, which is but for a moment, worketh for us a
far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory.
2 Corinthians 4:17
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While the Lord has not promised His people exemption from trials,
He has promised that which is far better. He has said, “As thy days, so
shall thy strength be.” ... If you are called to go through the fiery furnace
for His sake, Jesus will be by your side, even as He was with the faithful
three in Babylon. Those who love their Redeemer will rejoice at every
opportunity of sharing with Him humiliation and reproach. The love they
bear their Lord, makes suffering for His sake sweet.
In all ages Satan has persecuted the people of God. He has tortured
them and put them to death; but in dying they became conquerors. They
revealed in their steadfast faith a mightier One than Satan. Satan could
torture and kill the body, but he could not touch the life that was hid with
Christ in God. He could incarcerate in prison walls, but he could not
bind the spirit. They could look beyond the gloom to the glory, saying:
“I reckon that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be
compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us.” ...
The church of God, hated and persecuted by the world, are educated
and disciplined in the school of Christ. They walk in narrow paths on
earth; they are purified in the furnace of affliction. They follow Christ
through sore conflicts; they endure self-denial, and experience bitter dis-
appointments; but their painful experience teaches them the guilt and woe
of sin, and they look upon it with abhorrence. Being partakers of Christ’s
sufferings, they are destined to be partakers of His glory. In holy vision
the prophet saw the triumph of the people of God. He says: “I saw as it
were a sea of glass mingled with fire; and them that had gotten the victory
... stand on the sea of glass, having the harps of God. And they sing the
song of Moses the servant of God, and the song of the Lamb.
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Thoughts from the Mount of Blessing, 50, 51
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