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Welfare Ministry
gospel is the very essence of restoration, and Christ would have us
bid the brokenhearted, the hopeless, and the afflicted, take hold His
strength; for the acceptable year of the Lord has come.—
Manuscript
65b, 1898
.
Christianity the Solace of the Poor—There is a connection be-
tween the religion of Christ and poverty. Christianity is the solace of
the poor. There is a false religion, endangering the souls of all who
advance it, that teaches that selfish pleasure and enjoyment is the sum
of happiness. But the parable of the rich man and Lazarus shows us
that this is false. There came a time when the rich man would have
given all he possessed to have exchanged places with Lazarus, once
poor, and covered with sores.
In the humanity of Christ there are golden threads that bind the
believing, trusting poor man to His own soul of infinite love. He is the
great physician. In our world He bore our infirmities and carried our
burdens. He is the mighty Healer of all diseases. He was poor, and yet
He was the center of all goodness, all blessings. He is a reservoir of
power to all to consecrate their powers to the work of becoming sons
of God.—
Manuscript 22, 1898
.
Christ Lifted the Stigma From Poverty—Christ has ever been
the poor man’s friend. He chose poverty, and honored it by making
it His lot. He has stripped from it forever the reproach of scorn by
blessing the poor, the inheritors of God’s kingdom. Such was His work.
By consecrating Himself to a life of poverty He redeemed poverty
from its humiliation. He took His position with the poor that He might
lift from poverty the stigma that the world had attached to it. He knew
the danger of the love of riches. He knew that this love is ruinous to
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many souls. It places those who are rich where they indulge every
wish for grandeur. It teaches them to look down on those who are
suffering the pressure of poverty. It develops the weakness of human
minds and shows that notwithstanding the abundance of wealth, the
rich are not rich toward God.
The characters of many have been molded by the false estimate
placed on the worldly rich man. The man possessed of houses and
lands, lauded and deceived by the respect given him, may look down
upon the poor man, who possesses virtues that the rich man does
not. When weighed in the golden scales of the sanctuary, the selfish,
covetous rich man will be found wanting, while the poor man, who has