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Evangelism
hold a widespread work of grace was carried on in a heathen city.—
Letter 17, 1900
.
There needs to be a waking up among God’s people, that His
work may be carried forward with power. We need the baptism of the
Holy Spirit. We need to understand that God will add to the ranks of
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His people men of ability and influence, who are to act their part in
warning the world. All in the world are not lawless and sinful. God
has many thousands who have not bowed the knee to Baal. There
are God-fearing men in the fallen churches. If this were not so, we
should not be given the message to bear, “Babylon the great is fallen,
is fallen.... Come out of her, My people.”
The gospel is to be proclaimed in our cities. Men of learning and
influence are to hear the message. Not only white men but colored
men of ability are to accept the faith. These are to work for their own
people, and they are to be supported in doing the work the Lord desires
to have done.
Much more prayer, much more Christlikeness, much more confor-
mity to God’s will, is to be brought into God’s work. Outward show,
an extravagant outlay of means, will not accomplish the work to be
done. Many are gasping for a breath of life from heaven. They will
recognize the gospel when it is brought to them in the way that God
designs it to be brought.
Into the busy world, filled with the din of commerce and the alter-
cation of trade, where men were trying selfishly to get all they could
for self, Christ came; and above the confusion, His voice, like the
trump of God, was heard: “What shall it profit a man, if he shall gain
the whole world, and lose his own soul? Or what shall a man give in
exchange for his soul?”
Christ points men to the nobler world, which they have lost out of
their reckoning, and declares that the only city that will endure is the
city whose builder and maker is God. He shows them the threshold
of heaven, flushed with God’s living glory, and assures them that the
heavenly treasures are for those who overcome. He calls upon them
to strive with sanctified ambition to secure the immortal inheritance.
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He urges them to lay up their treasure beside the throne of God. Then,
instead of taxing themselves almost beyond endurance to gain earthly
riches, they will work with all the powers of body and mind for Christ.