Sermon/Remarks of Mrs. E. G. White at the Bible School
[Battle Creek, Michigan]
February 3, 1890
This manuscript is published in entirety in 1SAT 120-128.
My brethren, I am laboring most earnestly day and night. My mind is traveling. Things are constantly being revived to my mind that have been revealed in times past all the way along. I feel such a burden pressing and urging upon me that I cannot keep my tongue silent. Now we have talked it, and we have urged it, and we have set it before you, and begged and pleaded and prayed and wrestled with all the strength of our being, until we have felt afterward as though, after the occasion was over, the whole being was so feeble that my breath might stop and my life end at any time. But still on another occasion I am urged in behalf of the people. Now, why can’t you do some of this? Every time our people assemble, they come, and they hear, and they go away as they came. They may have a little light; but they do not act it; they do not take their position on the Lord’s side. You do not see that they have opened up the avenues of the heart where the Spirit of God can, with its illuminating power, come right into the heart and soul; so that they will respond. If God is working upon me in this direction, why is not there a more decided response with our brethren, and they take hold of the work too? Is it so that the burden may press upon me constantly, and yet my brethren and sisters sit as though it must always be so, and as though they have no special work to do in this matter? Now, brethren, we want to know whether we will take hold of that which is our privilege to lay hold of in Jesus Christ. 6LtMs, Ms 9, 1890, par. 1
I know there have been efforts—a contrary influence—to throw back the light—the light which God has been forcing in here upon us in regard to the righteousness of Christ; but if God has ever spoken by me, it is the truth, brethren. It is the truth that every soul of you will receive, or your soul will be left in darkness as barren as the hills of Gilboa—without dew or rain. 6LtMs, Ms 9, 1890, par. 2
The question will come up, How is it? Is it by conditions that we receive salvation? Never by conditions that we come to Christ. And if we come to Christ, then what is the condition? The condition is that by living faith we lay hold wholly and entirely upon the merits of the blood of a crucified and risen Saviour. When we do that, then we work the works of righteousness. But when God is calling the sinner in our world and inviting him, there is no condition there, he [is] drawn by the invitation of Christ, and it is not, “Now, you have got to respond in order to come to God.” 6LtMs, Ms 9, 1890, par. 3
The sinner comes, and as he comes and views Christ elevated upon that cross of Calvary, which God impresses upon his mind, there is a love beyond anything that is imagined that he has taken hold of. And what then? As he beholds that love, why he says that he is a sinner. Well, then, what is sin? Why, at once he has to come here to find out. There is no definition given in our world but that transgression is the transgression of the law, and therefore he finds out what sin is. And there is repentance toward God, and what then? Why, faith toward our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ that can speak pardon to the transgressor. 6LtMs, Ms 9, 1890, par. 4
Christ is drawing every one that is not past the boundary. He is drawing him to Him today; no matter how great that sinner is, He is drawing him. And if the sinner can get his arm fixed upon the cross of Calvary, then there is no conviction of sin? What is he there for? Because the law has been transgressed, and he begins to see that he is a sinner, and Christ died because the law was transgressed. And then he begins to look to the righteousness of Christ as the only thing that can cleanse the sinner from his sins and from his transgressions. 6LtMs, Ms 9, 1890, par. 5
Now, we want to have an intelligent knowledge of this thing. Then we want to take hold of the righteousness of Jesus Christ by living faith and know that we have not any. We may work to the very best of our ability, and we cannot make a single virtue in ourselves; it is the righteousness of Jesus Christ alone that can do it. Then, as we are clothed with the righteousness of Christ we have a power and a strength that is imparted unto us, and we will not want to sin; we cannot do it with the righteousness of Christ, and with ourselves in a position where we shall have Christ working with us and by us. We may make mistakes, we may make errors, but we shall hate these sins—the sins that caused the suffering of the Son of God in our behalf because we were transgressors of the law of God. 6LtMs, Ms 9, 1890, par. 6
Now, I want to say, brethren, there is a door open, and no man can close it to you—no matter if it is those in the highest position or the lowest position, they cannot close it, but you can. You can close the door of your heart, that the light which God has sent you for the last year and a half—or nearly that, that it shall not have its influence and its effect upon your life, nor be brought into your religious experience; and this is what God sends His messengers. 6LtMs, Ms 9, 1890, par. 7
As John went forth to proclaim his message, God gave him a work to do. He had to do that work and arouse the attention of the people. He had to cry aloud, lift up his voice like a trumpet in the wilderness. Just as spoken in Isaiah: “Cry aloud, spare not, lift up thy voice like a trumpet, and shew my people their transgression, and the house of Jacob their sins.” [Isaiah 58:1.] Well now, Christ had not come, yet, upon the stage of action as a minister. But after the ministry of Christ commenced here, was John to prepare the way for the ministry of Christ, that the minds of the people might be agitated, that their hard hearts, and principles, and customs, and practices might be all stirred up; and he condemned their course, and condemned their practices, calling them a generation of vipers. 6LtMs, Ms 9, 1890, par. 8
Then Christ comes in with a healing balm, and He comes with a message which, with the heart broken up the seed can fall into prepared soil. And when the disciples [became] jealous of [Christ], they said, This man, Christ, is baptizing, and all men go unto Him. They bring it in to stir up jealousy. John tells them there cometh One after me who is preferred before me, whose shoes’ latchet I am not worthy to unloose. [John 1:27.] Here was the very work to be done. Well, now, do you think that John had not human feelings? Of course he had! But those human feelings should not have a power over him on that occasion. No, when he sees Christ in the crowd, why he says, “Behold the lamb of God which taketh away the sins of the world.” [Verse 29.] He directed the people right to Christ and two of the disciples immediately followed Him. 6LtMs, Ms 9, 1890, par. 9
God has workmen. They carry the work so far, and they can carry it no further. God does not want that they should carry that work any further, because it is just as natural for the mold of man to be placed upon man as it is to breathe. Now, God calls upon another workman to come right in and advance the work. The one that was working becomes circumscribed; he cannot see that the very line of work that he is working in is not to be pursued to the very close of time, when it is not. There has got to be more light and power infused into the work that they have not had. 6LtMs, Ms 9, 1890, par. 10
There is a workman to come and carry that work upward and forward, that breaks up the old mold that would be an injury to them, and which would have crippled their experience and advance. But this mold has got to be taken off. The mold of man, the peculiarities of man, are stamped upon it, and it comes to be deified by all those that receive of his labor. Now there comes in another element that takes the old mold off. This work is to be carried upward and forward, and the building is to go up. And thus God has worked with His workman; He buried the workmen, but the work progresses still. 6LtMs, Ms 9, 1890, par. 11
When I sat with the hand of my dying husband in my own, I knew that God was at work; for while I sat right there on the bed by his side, he in such feveredness, it was there, like a clear chain of light was presented before me: The workmen are buried, but the work shall go on; I have workmen that shall take hold of this work; fear not, be not discouraged, it shall go forward. 6LtMs, Ms 9, 1890, par. 12
It was there I understood that I was to take the work and a burden stronger than I had ever borne before. It was there that I promised the Lord that I would stand to my post of duty, and I have tried to do it. I do, as far as possible, the work that God has given me to do, with the understanding that God was to bring an element into this work that we have not had yet. 6LtMs, Ms 9, 1890, par. 13
Our young men look at the older men that stand still as a stick and will not move to accept any new light that is brought in. They will laugh and ridicule what these men say and what they do as of no consequence. Who carries the burden of that laugh, and of that contempt? I ask you? Who carries it? It is the very ones that have interposed themselves between the light that God has given, that it shall not go to the people who should have it. I know what I am talking about. These things have not been revealed to me for the last forty years, and I in ignorance in regard to them. 6LtMs, Ms 9, 1890, par. 14
Now, brethren, I say, Clear the King’s highway, for your soul’s sake. And if you have interposed between the people and the light, get out of the way, or God will move you out of the way. I tell you that God calls for men to come up to the help of the Lord, to the help of the Lord against the mighty. They are not to pull back, they are not to put their weight against the chariot so as to pull it back, but they are to push with all the might and energy that God has given them. 6LtMs, Ms 9, 1890, par. 15
Now it is just exactly as in the days of the Jews; when there was a message came in, why all the power of the leaders was put against it, that it should not have access to the people. Now, brethren, go to God for yourselves, and on your knees plead with God. We cannot bear that men should go away from the very center and heart of the work here, with wrong impressions. I cannot bear that they should go away from here with a cloud on their minds. If God sends us light, let it come to us, and let no man close the door, or try to close it. Don’t close it yourselves; open the door of your heart and let the brilliant rays of light shine into your heart and into your mind. Let, I pray you, the Sun of Righteousness in. 6LtMs, Ms 9, 1890, par. 16
Now, if it is my work, and if God wants me to stand and oppose this matter to the end, I can. But how long before you decide you will receive my testimony? How long before it shall have any weight with you? How long before you will accept the word that has been among us from its very commencement? How long will you reject or turn from the testimony to your own feelings and your own ideas and your own impulses? I have stood here and fought every inch of ground, that we may have the very message that this people has had, that I might work together with God. 6LtMs, Ms 9, 1890, par. 17
I want to know how God will let His people deny and hedge up the way, that the light that He has sent to His people cannot reach them. How long is this thing to be tampered with? How long is the grace of God to come to this people in vain? I plead with you for Christ’s sake to clear the King’s highway, and trifle not with the Spirit of God. 6LtMs, Ms 9, 1890, par. 18
We have traveled all through to the different places of the meetings that I might stand side by side with the messengers of God that I knew were His messengers, that I knew had a message for His people. I gave my message with them right in harmony with the very message they were bearing. What did we see? We saw a power attending the message. In every instance we worked—and some know how hard we worked—I think it was a whole week, going early and late, at Chicago, in order that we might get these ideas into the minds of the brethren. 6LtMs, Ms 9, 1890, par. 19
The devil has been working for a year to obliterate these ideas—the whole of them. And it takes hard work to change their old opinions; they think they [have] got to trust in their own righteousness and in their own works, and keep looking to themselves, and not appropriating the righteousness of Christ and bringing it into their life and into their character. And we worked there for one week. It was after one week had passed away before there was a break, and the power of God, like a tidal wave, rolled over that congregation. I tell you, it was to set men free. It was to point them to the Lamb of God which taketh away the sins of the world. 6LtMs, Ms 9, 1890, par. 20
And there at South Lancaster, the mighty movings of the Spirit of God were there. Some are here that were in that meeting. God revealed His glory and every student in the college was brought to the door there in confession and the movings of the Spirit of God were there. And thus [it was] from place to place. Everywhere we went we saw the movings of the Spirit of God. 6LtMs, Ms 9, 1890, par. 21
Do you think, like the ten lepers, I shall keep silent? That I shall not raise my voice to sing the righteousness of God and praise Him and glorify Him? I try to present it to you, that you may see the evidence that I saw. But it seems that the words go as into empty air, and how long is it to be thus? How long will the people at the heart of the work hold themselves against God? How long will men here sustain them in doing this work? Get out of the way, brethren. Take your hand off the ark of God, and let the Spirit of God come in and work in mighty power. I feel to stand at my post of duty. I may fall here as my husband fell, but I need to do a work for God. I need to do a work for eternity. 6LtMs, Ms 9, 1890, par. 22
What is the testimony that has been given here? Who are the men to come in and give you anything, infusing new light, and bringing you up to the higher standpoint? If you can show them to me, if you can show me that the work is advancing, we say amen; but we cannot see it. We want to see that God puts His impress upon the work. We want to see men that bear heavenly credentials, that shall carry this work in the very last days to its completion. 6LtMs, Ms 9, 1890, par. 23
God will give every man here a chance if they will accept it. But if they do not choose to accept it, He takes every man in his place, and they come right in and carry forward the work, and they can tell, as John did, The things which we have seen, the things which we have heard, and which our hands have handled of the Word of Life, these things we tell unto you, we show unto you. 6LtMs, Ms 9, 1890, par. 24
Why, every one of these that have a place, they have power, and God wants them to live among us; but God forbid that they should close the door that no other but they shall be heard. Now, brethren, I entreat of you for Christ’s sake, let us get to reason, and let the Spirit of God have influence upon your hearts. I feel an intense interest for every soul here. Why? Because I look to Calvary and I see the value of the price that has been paid for the soul, and therefore I do not want that [any] soul should close the door of his heart from God. I entreat of you, brethren and sisters, that you should come near to God, that you should take hold of His power, and that you should not deprive yourselves of the very blessing that God wants you to have. 6LtMs, Ms 9, 1890, par. 25