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Testimonies for the Church Volume 8
doing the very work that God ordained should be done to prepare a
people to “build the old waste places” and to stand in the breach, as
represented in the fifty-eighth chapter of Isaiah. In this scripture the
work we are to do is clearly defined as being medical missionary work.
This work is to be done in all places. God has a vineyard; and He
desires that this vineyard shall be worked unselfishly. No parts are to
be neglected. The most neglected portion needs the most wide-awake
missionaries to do the work which, through Isaiah, the Holy Spirit has
portrayed:
“Is not this the fast that I have chosen? to loose the bands of
wickedness, to undo the heavy burdens, and to let the oppressed go
free, and that ye break every yoke?” “If thou draw out thy soul to
the hungry, and satisfy the afflicted soul; then shall thy light rise in
obscurity, and thy darkness be as the noonday: and the Lord shall
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guide thee continually, and satisfy thy soul in drought, and make fat
thy bones: and thou shalt be like a watered garden, and like a spring
of water, whose waters fail not. And they that shall be of thee shall
build the old waste places: thou shalt raise up the foundations of many
generations; and thou shalt be called, The repairer of the breach, The
restorer of paths to dwell in.”
Isaiah 58:6, 10-12
.
* * * * *
For His own name’s sake, God will not permit the froward and the
independent to carry out their unsanctified plans. He will visit them
for their perversity of action. “There is no peace, saith my God, to the
wicked.”
Isaiah 57:21
. But in His judgments the Lord will remember
mercy. He declares:
“I will not contend forever, neither will I be always wroth: for the
spirit should fail before Me, and the souls which I have made. For the
iniquity of his covetousness was I wroth, and smote him: I hid Me,
and was wroth, and he went on frowardly in the way of his heart. I
have seen his ways, and will heal him: I will lead him also, and restore
comforts unto him and to his mourners. I create the fruit of the lips;
Peace, peace to him that is far off, and to him that is near, saith the
Lord; and I will heal him.”
Verses 16-19
.
“The spirit of My people should fail before Me,” said the Lord,
“if I were to deal with them in accordance with their perversity. They