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Welfare Ministry
the last message of mercy in the very best way to reach those in the
churches who are hungering and praying for light.—
Letter 232, 1899
.
Turn to Fields Ready to Harvest—This work is being made the
all-absorbing work, but this is not in God’s order. It is a never-ending
work, and if it is carried on as it has been in the past, all the power of
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God’s people will be required to counterbalance it, and the work of
preparing a people to stand amid the perils of the last days will never
be done.
Our work is to put on the armor and make aggressive warfare.
Laborers are not to be encouraged to work in the slums and filth of
the cities, where they will only secure converts who need watching,
and that continually. There are fields all ripe for harvest, and all the
time and money is not to be devoted to gathering in those who through
indulgence of appetite have trained themselves in pollution. Some of
these may be saved. And there are those who can labor in the lowest
places of the earth without becoming deteriorated in character. But it
is not safe to give young men and young women this class of work to
do. The experiment would be a dear one. Thus those who could work
in the highways would be disqualified for work of any kind....
Men’s feelings may become deeply moved as they see human
beings suffering as the result of their own course of action. There are
those who are specially impressed to come into direct contact with
this class, and the Lord gives them a commission to work in the worst
places of the earth, doing what they can to redeem outcasts and place
them where they will be under the care of the church. But the Lord has
not called Seventh-day Adventists to make this work a specialty. He
would not have them in this work engross many workers or exhaust
the treasury.—
Manuscript 16, 1900
.
Support From the World Not From Churches—Constant work
is to be done for the outcasts, but this work is not to be made all-
absorbing.... No one should now visit our churches and in the present
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pressure obtain from them means to sustain the work of rescuing
outcasts. The means to sustain that work should come, and will come,
largely from those not of our faith. Let the churches take up their
appointed work of presenting truth from the oracles of God in the
highways.—
Letter 138, 1898
.
The Lord does not lay upon His people all the burden of laboring
for a class so hardened by sin that many of them will neither be ben-