“For from you sounded out the word of the Lord not only in Macedonia and Achaia, but also in every place your faith to God-ward is spread abroad; so that we need not
to speak any thing.” – 1 Thessalonians 1:8
The Lord has many precious souls in our large cities, who should be reached by the special truths for this time. But the course pursued by young men and young women connected with the mission is frivolous, degrading the work, and demoralizing the mission. Such defective characters separate God from the mission-rooms. It does not require weeks or months to read the character of many of the workers. Their conduct is an offense to God. There are wrongs existing in society which Christians will not practice, but abhor. Let those who are frivolous and carnally minded be placed in our missions, and their influence tends to lower everything connected with the mission. (1)
As a people, we are not doing one fiftieth of what we might do as active missionaries. If we were only vitalized by the Holy Spirit, there should be a hundred missionaries where there is now one. In every city there should be a corps of organized, well-disciplined workers; not merely one or two, but scores should be set to work. … More attention should be given to training and educating missionaries with special reference to work in cities. (2)
There is to be a working of our cities as they never have been worked. That which should have been done twenty, yea, more than twenty years ago, is now to be done speedily. The work will be more difficult to do now than it would have been years ago, but it will be done.
Our work is made exceedingly hard because…of the dearth of efficient teachers and willing helpers. (3)
You may fold your hands saying, “I am only a lay member of the church; it is a hopeless task for me to undertake.” But have you yoked up with Christ? Are you laboring in His way? Oh, let it no longer be a source of grief to the heavenly intelligences and to Him who has paid such an infinite price for souls, that you refuse to be channels of light, that you refuse to cooperate with the heavenly agencies for the salvation of souls! But let us “awake out of sleep,” and put all our God-given abilities into the work, that it may be written in the books that we are “redeeming the time, because the days are evil.” (4)
Charge for the Day: Be willing to be an active missionary. Prayerfully ask God to remove the obstacles that have kept you from yoking up with Christ, and go forward laboring in His way.
1. General Conference Daily Bulletin, February 6, 1893, p. 162
2. General Conference Daily Bulletin, January 30, 1893, p. 37
3. The Paulson Collection, 109-110
4. The Review and Herald, April 21, 1896