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Testimonies for the Church Volume 8
The means expended in enlarging your advantages in Battle Creek,
which are already overgrown and have passed reasonable limits, should
be used in establishing missionary stations elsewhere. You should
broaden your plans and widen the field of your operations. You should
send wise men into the cities and towns that have not yet heard the
gospel message. Pick out the best men you can possibly spare, and
give them opportunity to become caretakers and burden bearers. Let
them have opportunity to develop the talents that in the past have lain
idle. Place them where they can use their God-given abilities in calling
sinners to repentance. Let men who make it manifest that they love
God have a chance to do something for Him.
Let men learn to pray earnestly, and let them make their prayers
short and right to the point. Let them learn to speak of the world’s
Redeemer and to lift up the Man of Calvary higher and still higher.
All the preaching in the world will not make men feel deeply the
need of the perishing souls around them. Nothing will so arouse in
men and women a self-sacrificing zeal as to send them forth into new
fields to work for those in darkness. Prepare workers to go out into
the highways and hedges. Do not call men and women to the great
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center, encouraging them to leave churches that need their aid. Men
must learn to bear responsibilities. Not one in a hundred among us is
doing anything beyond engaging in common, worldly enterprises. We
are not half awake to the worth of the souls for whom Christ died.
We need wise nurserymen, who will transplant trees to different
localities and give them advantages that will enable them to grow. It is
the positive duty of God’s people to go into the regions beyond. Let
forces be set at work to clear new ground, to establish new centers
of influence wherever an opening can be found. Rally workers who
possess true missionary zeal, and let them go forth to diffuse light and
knowledge far and near. Let them take the living principles of health
reform into the communities that to a large degree are ignorant of these
principles. Let classes be formed, and instruction be given regarding
the treatment of disease.
It is a fact that through the influence of the sanitarium the truth
of heaven has come to the notice of thousands. Yet there is a work
to be done that has been neglected. Money has been expended in
enlarging facilities in Battle Creek, when the Lord desires the leaven
to be introduced into the mass of meal, that the whole may be leavened.