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Testimonies for the Church Volume 5
and anoint thine eyes with eyesalve, that thou mayest see.”
In this life we must meet fiery trials and make costly sacrifices,
but the peace of Christ is the reward. There has been so little self-
denial, so little suffering for Christ’s sake, that the cross is almost
entirely forgotten. We must be partakers with Christ of His sufferings
if we would sit down in triumph with Him on His throne. So long
as we choose the easy path of self-indulgence and are frightened at
self-denial, our faith will never become firm, and we cannot know the
peace of Jesus nor the joy that comes through conscious victory. The
most exalted of the redeemed host that stand before the throne of God
and the Lamb, clad in white, know the conflict of overcoming, for they
have come up through great tribulation. Those who have yielded to
circumstances rather than engage in this conflict will not know how to
stand in that day when anguish will be upon every soul, when, though
Noah, Job, and Daniel were in the land, they could save neither son nor
daughter, for everyone must deliver his soul by his own righteousness.
No one need say that his case is hopeless, that he cannot live the
life of a Christian. Ample provision is made by the death of Christ
for every soul. Jesus is our ever-present help in time of need. Only
call upon Him in faith, and He has promised to hear and answer your
petitions.
Oh, for a living, active faith! We need it; we must have it, or we
shall faint and fail in the day of trial. The darkness that will then rest
upon our path must not discourage us or drive us to despair. It is the
veil with which God covers His glory when He comes to impart rich
blessings. We should know this by our past experience. In that day
when God has a controversy with His people this experience will be a
source of comfort and hope.
It is now that we must keep ourselves and our children unspotted
from the world. It is now that we must wash our robes of character
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and make them white in the blood of the Lamb. It is now that we must
overcome pride, passion, and spiritual slothfulness. It is now that we
must awake and make determined effort for symmetry of character.
“Today if ye will hear His voice, harden not your hearts.” We are in
a most trying position, waiting, watching for our Lord’s appearing.
The world is in darkness. “But ye, brethren,” says Paul, “are not in
darkness, that that day should overtake you as a thief.” It is ever God’s