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Meeting the Requirements, April 1
Conduct yourselves wisely toward outsiders, making the most of the
time. Let your speech always be gracious, seasoned with salt, so that
you may know how you ought to answer every one.
Colossians 4:5, 6
,
R.S.V.
Let not cares be so magnified that the time shall be occupied in many
cares that are not positively essential. The seriousness of this question presses
upon my mind with an intensity that I cannot express. Time is passing, and
when I am presented with the many churches that are not prepared to work
for the Master, but are in a careless, unconcerned state, I am alarmed, and
inquire, What can I say, what can I do, to change this order of things? I can
say, “What shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his
own soul? Or what shall a man give in exchange for his soul?” (
Mark 8:36,
37
).
I think none of us are in a state to realize we must be laborers together
with God. Many do not understand what true conversion means, what it
involves. And now I address you and your family, that you may be aroused
and impressed with the solemn duty to seek to arouse them to a sense of the
need of most diligent watching and seeking to save perishing souls out of
Christ. Every day warn someone who knows not that the end of all things is
at hand.
Not one jot or tittle of God’s holy requirements will ever be changed to
meet man in his unready condition. His holy Word will never change or be
done away. The world is asleep in their sins. Heaven and earth shall pass
away, but His Word can never pass away. All of us must be guided by the
Word of God. What a work is before us, and professed Christians realize it
not! “Except ye be converted, and become as little children, ye shall not enter
into the kingdom of heaven” (
Matthew 18:3
)....
How few realize the influence of the little things in this life. Those who
can bear the test, the proving of God, will be acknowledged of Christ. The
truth, saving truth, of God’s Word, lived, will fit us for the company of the
redeemed. God help us to appreciate moral excellence. Refined mental
qualities, sanctified, are of more value than the gold of Ophir. The formation
of a true moral standing with God is the work of a lifetime. Teach this, my
dear brother and sister, by precept and example.—
Letter 37a, April 1, 1903
,
to Brother and Sister Burden, at the Sydney, Australia, Sanitarium.
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