“Let him know, that he which converteth the sinner from the error of his way shall save a soul from death, and shall hide a multitude of sins.” – James 5:20
Brethren and sisters in the faith, does the question arise in your hearts, “Am I my brother’s keeper?” If you claim to be children of God, you are your brother’s keeper. The Lord holds the church responsible for the souls of those whom they might be the means of saving. He has intrusted you with sacred truth; Christ abiding in the individual members of the church is a well of water springing up into everlasting life. You are guilty before God if you do not make every effort possible to dispense this living water to others. Men are perishing close by your own doors, while they hew out to themselves broken cisterns that hold no water. Heaven is indignant at the ease of men and women in Zion, while souls are going down to ruin in their ignorance and their sins. If the members of the church were to see themselves as God sees them, they would be overwhelmed with self-reproach. They could not endure to look their responsibilities and delinquencies in the face.
If we indeed have the truth for these last days, it must be carried to every nation, kindred, tongue, and people. Ere long the living and the dead are to be judged according to the deeds done in the body, and the law of God is the standard by which they are to be tested. Then they must now be warned; God’s holy law must be vindicated, and held up before them as a mirror. To accomplish this work, means is needed. I know that times are hard, money is not plenty; but the truth must be spread, and money to spread it must be placed in the treasury.
Many are trembling with fear because the work moves faster than their slow faith, and because means is expended more rapidly than it comes into the treasury; and yet we have taken only the first few steps in advance. Our message is world-wide; yet many are doing literally nothing; many more so very little, with so great a want of faith, that it is next to nothing. Shall we abandon the fields we have already opened in foreign countries? Shall we drop part of the work in our home missions? Shall we grow pale at a debt of a few thousand dollars? Shall we falter and become laggards now, in the very last scenes of this earth’s history? My heart says, No, no. I cannot contemplate this question without a burning zeal to have the work go. We would not deny our faith, we would not deny Christ, yet we shall do this unless we move forward as the providence of God opens the way. (1)
Charge for the Day: Ask God to give you greater faith, a love for lost souls, and energy to pick up the work, regardless of hardship and difficulty.
1. Historical Sketches of the Foreign Missions of the Seventh-day Adventists, pp. 291-292