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Testimonies for the Church Volume 5
in good works, ready to distribute, willing to communicate; laying up
in store for themselves a good foundation against the time to come,
that they may lay hold on eternal life.”
Liberality is not so natural to us that we gain this virtue by accident.
It must be cultivated. We must deliberately resolve that we will honor
God with our substance; and then we must let nothing tempt us to
rob Him of the tithes and offerings that are His due. We must be
intelligent, systematic, and continuous in our acts of charity to men
and our expressions of gratitude to God for His bounties to us. This is
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too sacred a duty to be left to chance or to be controlled by impulse or
feeling. We should regularly reserve something for God’s cause, that
He may not be robbed of the portion which He claims. When we rob
God we rob ourselves also. We give up the heavenly treasure for the
sake of having more of this earth. This is a loss that we cannot afford
to sustain. If we live so that we can have the blessing of God we shall
have His prospering hand with us in our temporal affairs, but if His
hand is against us He can defeat all our plans and scatter faster than
we can gather.
I was shown that the situation of things in these two conferences is
sad indeed; but God has many precious souls here over whom He has
a jealous care, and He will not leave them to be deceived and misled.
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