Church the Light of the World
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it for the benefit of the cause of God. Send your treasures before you
into heaven.
The members of the church should individually hold themselves
and all their possessions upon the altar of God. Now, as never before,
the Saviour’s admonition is applicable: “Sell that ye have, and give
alms; provide yourselves bags which wax not old, a treasure in the
heavens that faileth not, where no thief approacheth, neither moth
corrupteth. For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.”
Those who are fastening their means in large houses, in lands, in
worldly enterprises, are saying by their actions: “God cannot have it; I
want it for myself.” They have bound up their one talent in a napkin and
hid it in the earth. There is cause for such to be alarmed. Brethren, God
has not entrusted means to you to lie idle nor to be covetously retained
or hid away, but to be used to advance His cause, to save the souls of
the perishing. It is not the time now to bind up the Lord’s money in
your expensive buildings and your large enterprises, while His cause
is crippled and left to beg its way, the treasury half-supplied. The Lord
is not in this way of working. Remember, the day is fast approaching
when it will be said: “Give an account of thy stewardship.” Can you
not discern the signs of the times?
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Every day that passes brings us nearer the last great important
day. We are one year nearer the judgment, nearer eternity, than we
were at the beginning of 1884. Are we also drawing nearer to God?
Are we watching unto prayer? Another year of our time to labor has
rolled into eternity. Every day we have been associating with men
and women who are judgment bound. Each day may have been the
dividing line to some soul; someone may have made the decision
which shall determine his future destiny. What has been our influence
over these fellow travelers? What efforts have we put forth to bring
them to Christ?
It is a solemn thing to die, but a far more solemn thing to live.
Every thought and word and deed of our lives will meet us again.
What we make of ourselves in probationary time, that we must remain
to all eternity. Death brings dissolution to the body, but makes no
change in the character. The coming of Christ does not change our
characters; it only fixes them forever beyond all change.
Again I appeal to the members of the church to be Christians, to
be Christlike. Jesus was a worker, not for Himself, but for others. He