April

Meeting the Requirements, April 1

Conduct yourselves wisely toward outsiders, making the most of the time. Let your speech always be gracious, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how you ought to answer every one. Colossians 4:5, 6, R.S.V.TDG 100.1

Let not cares be so magnified that the time shall be occupied in many cares that are not positively essential. The seriousness of this question presses upon my mind with an intensity that I cannot express. Time is passing, and when I am presented with the many churches that are not prepared to work for the Master, but are in a careless, unconcerned state, I am alarmed, and inquire, What can I say, what can I do, to change this order of things? I can say, “What shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul? Or what shall a man give in exchange for his soul?” (Mark 8:36, 37).TDG 100.2

I think none of us are in a state to realize we must be laborers together with God. Many do not understand what true conversion means, what it involves. And now I address you and your family, that you may be aroused and impressed with the solemn duty to seek to arouse them to a sense of the need of most diligent watching and seeking to save perishing souls out of Christ. Every day warn someone who knows not that the end of all things is at hand.TDG 100.3

Not one jot or tittle of God's holy requirements will ever be changed to meet man in his unready condition. His holy Word will never change or be done away. The world is asleep in their sins. Heaven and earth shall pass away, but His Word can never pass away. All of us must be guided by the Word of God. What a work is before us, and professed Christians realize it not! “Except ye be converted, and become as little children, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven” (Matthew 18:3)....TDG 100.4

How few realize the influence of the little things in this life. Those who can bear the test, the proving of God, will be acknowledged of Christ. The truth, saving truth, of God's Word, lived, will fit us for the company of the redeemed. God help us to appreciate moral excellence. Refined mental qualities, sanctified, are of more value than the gold of Ophir. The formation of a true moral standing with God is the work of a lifetime. Teach this, my dear brother and sister, by precept and example.—Letter 37a, April 1, 1903, to Brother and Sister Burden, at the Sydney, Australia, Sanitarium.TDG 100.5