86
Testimonies to Southern Africa
it is next to an impossibility to unify. The missionary work is a great
and grand work, and those whom God has made stewards in trust must
not feel at liberty to unite in any confederacy which God, who sees
the end from the beginning, cannot justify and endorse as glorifying
His holy name. God must be consulted as to how His work shall be
advanced without having woven into it one thread of selfishness. God
will work. He will furnish means for the carrying forward of His work
without entanglement. His work in not to be bound about because men
choose to act out perverse human nature instead of submitting to be
moulded and fashioned after the divine similitude.
In Africa as well as in America and Australia men have been
quarried out of the world, not to be left as rough stones, but to be taken
into the workshop of God, and placed under the axe and hammer and
chisel of gospel truth, till all the roughness disappears, and they are
made ready for the heavenly polishing. The roughness has not yet been
cut away. Many are not yet subdued by the Spirit of God. Because
of this, the work in Africa and America and other parts of the Lord’s
vineyard has not advanced as it should.
We are doing what we can, according to the light given, for Aus-
tralia. A direct necessity is being met by the work of women who have
given themselves to the Lord, and are reaching out to help a needy,
sin-stricken world, who want the truth, but do not know that they want
it. Personal evangelistic work is to be done. People are to be reached
by house to house labour. The women who have taken up this work
do everything but preach the gospel from the pulpit. They carry the
gospel to the homes of the people in the highways and the byways.
They read and explain the Word to families, praying with them, caring
for the sick, relieving their temporal necessities. They present before
families and individuals the purifying, transforming influence of the
truth. They show them that the way to find peace and happiness and
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joy is to follow Jesus.
The Lord has permitted Brother John Wessels to go to Africa and
Elder Daniells to accompany him. But I have been shown that there is
in the hearts of the people of Africa something that will not be easily
overcome, something that shows that some are not converted. They
are not under the discipline of God. They do not accept God’s way
of doing them good, but choose rather their own way. They have yet
to learn in the school of Christ His meekness and lowliness. They