Personal Finance
69
and some lost their money, which should have gone into the cause of
God.—
Testimonies on the Case of Elder E. P. Daniels, 71
(Ph 96).
Do not sell merchandise to your people for your personal
gain—A great mistake has been made by some who profess present
truth, by introducing merchandise in the course of a series of meetings
and by their traffic diverting minds from the object of the meetings.
If Christ were now upon earth, He would drive out these peddlers
and traffickers, whether they be ministers or people, with a scourge of
small cords, as when He entered the temple anciently “and cast out
all them that sold and bought in the temple, and overthrew the tables
[67]
of the money-changers, and the seats of them that sold doves, and
said unto them, It is written, My house shall be called the house of
prayer; but ye have made it a den of thieves.” These traffickers might
have pleaded as an excuse that the articles they held for sale were for
sacrificial offerings. But their object was to get gain, to obtain means,
to accumulate.—
Testimonies for the Church 1:471
.
It is a sacrilege to take one dollar from God’s treasury for
yourself—That which has been set apart according to the Scripture as
belonging to the Lord, constitutes the revenue of the gospel, and it is
no longer ours. We are to treat it as wholly the Lord’s. It is no better
than sacrilege for any man to take one dollar from God’s treasury to
serve himself or to serve others in their secular business. This has been
done, and some ministers are at fault in diverting from the altar of God
that which has been especially dedicated to him. Ministers should
regard this matter in a right light. Let them not, when brought into a
strait place, take money consecrated to religious purposes, and use it
for their own advantage, soothing their conscience by saying that they
will repay it at some future time. Far better cut down your expenses to
your income, restrict your wants, and live within your means, than use
the Lord’s money for secular purposes. This subject is not regarded
as it should be. Under no pretext is the money paid into the treasury
of God to be used for the benefit of any one in temporal affairs. It
must be kept for the object for which it was given.—
The Review and
Herald, May 23, 1893
.
Your reward comes when the work is done—A faithful shep-
herd will not study his own ease and convenience, but will labor for
the interest of the sheep. In this great work he will forget self; in his
search for the lost sheep he will not realize that he himself is weary,