The thought in the study this morning centers around Colossians 2:6, 7: “As ye have therefore received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk ye in him: rooted and built up in him, and stablished in the faith, as ye have been taught, abounding therein with thanksgiving.”GCB June 8, 1913, page 305.1

We have now come to the closing days of this Conference. There are only a few parting hours remaining. It brings sadness to my heart whenever I come into a gathering of this sort for a few days spent in sweet communion with my brethren and sisters, telling them of the experiences that have befallen me and listening to the manner in which God has led them, to face the time of parting. Some have already gone; others, perhaps, will go today. Sunday and Monday will witness a great scattering from this encampment. We go our several ways, and none of us know the experiences that wait on the morrow in our lives. Probably this company as such will never be gathered together again as they have been in this meeting.GCB June 8, 1913, page 305.2

I think I can truthfully say that to me personally, this has been the best meeting, the best general gathering, that I have ever enjoyed. [Hearty amens.] And I think that which has made it so in my life has been the fact that, as never before in my experience, have I endeavored to submit myself to God. I have done more praying during this session of the General Conference than during any such gathering that I have ever before attended. I have gone off alone by myself, and have sought God; and to that, in a large measure, I attribute the greater blessing that I have received. But now I realize, as I have said, that in a few days I must go back to my old environment. As for me, I must go back to the dull routine of office work. Some of you will go back to your offices, to your sanitariums, to your schools, to your conference work, to your farms, to your housework. Most of us go back into the same conditions from which we came when starting for this meeting.GCB June 8, 1913, page 305.3

We will stand face to face with the same difficulties. Before this meeting convened, I had some trials in my life. There was friction; there were difficulties that I had to meet and face day after day. When this meeting is over, I shall have those same difficulties to face. We take with us the same tired bodies back to our homes, do we not? We have no promise that there will come a change in these bodies of ours until the blessed return of the Lord Jesus Christ. We became weary, and tired, and tempted before this meeting. When this meeting is over, we shall become weary just the same. O, we shall come to know in future days what nerve tension is, because I tell you, my friends, we live in a strenuous age. Intensity is taking possession of the very elements around us, and we feel that in our lives. I feel it in the Review and Herald Office.GCB June 8, 1913, page 305.4

PHOTO-Georgetown church, British Guiana

We feel the intensity of life, the intensity of the wear of life. You feel it wherever you are. But, O, I am so thankful for this, that if we must go back to the same old environments, to meet the same situations, and carry back there the same mortal bodies, I am thankful to God this morning, my dear friends, that we can go back there with a new spirit in the Lord Jesus Christ! We can go back there with a new spirit in these old bodies. We can go back there to meet those trials and temptations we faced just before we came here, with a new companionship, and that is the companionship of the Lord Jesus.GCB June 8, 1913, page 305.5

I wish to raise the question this morning, my friends, What will be your experience in the coming days? Now, as you leave this meeting in a short time and go back to your home, what will be your experience in the months to come? You may make that experience, under God, largely what you will. I have never charged God with the responsibility of my failures. I believe that when I trace those failures up, they have always been due to self, to my own choice, to my own course of conduct. On the other hand, I have always given God credit for the success that has come to me in Christian experience. And so I believe this morning that every man and woman in this tent may so link up with the Lord Jesus Christ that the experience of the coming days may be made largely what you will, under the Lord.GCB June 8, 1913, page 305.6

I believe that God calls every one of his children to a life of victory, and the concern of my heart for a number of months past has not been the success of this movement—O, my dear friends, a long time ago I settled it that this movement was going to succeed, that God was going to bring victory to his people. I know the truth of God is going to triumph, but the concern of my heart is whether this holy truth that I profess is going to enter into my life, and I be sanctified by it. When the truth triumphs, will I triumph also? I have felt the greatest concern of late to obtain the victory in my own personal life over my besetments. I have been endeavoring to study my relationship to my family, and to my brethren and sisters in the church; and I have been endeavoring by God’s grace to bring victory into my personal experience in those every-day relationships. And, O my friends, I have found this, that whenever I have reached out and tried to take hold of God, God has never denied himself to me; but he has stood ready to respond to the least appeal on my part.GCB June 8, 1913, page 305.7

I am so thankful for this this morning, that God looks down upon Israel scattered abroad through this world. He sees his children here and there throughout this earth, and when a hand is raised up to God, he looks down in the darkness and sees that hand. When a heart is open and longing for the blessed Jesus, God records the desires and the impulses of that heart. God calls to perfection; he calls to a life of victory. And I believe that should be the standard that we should all set before us in the coming days—the standard of perfection by God’s grace.GCB June 8, 1913, page 306.1

I will read from 1 John 2:1: “My little children, these things write I unto you, that ye sin not.” O my dear friends, there is the standard God has set before us for the future: “My little children, these things write I unto you, that ye sin not.” The perfect God could not possibly set before us a different standard than that? I say, the perfect God, who knows no sin, could set no other standard. So the Lord Jesus Christ calls every one of us here this morning to perfection. He says that that is the ideal we are to place before us; that is the standard of Christian experience and Christian living. How will that standard be achieved? In Romans 13:14 we are told how it is done: “But put ye on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make not provision for the flesh, to fulfill the lusts thereof.” Then, when reaching out after that perfection in our characters, we are to put on the Lord Jesus Christ; and how fully are we to do it, my friends?—We are to do it so fully and so completely that we will make no provision for the flesh, “to fulfill the lusts thereof.”GCB June 8, 1913, page 306.2

I think the reason why we fail so many times is because we do make provision for the flesh. We expect to fail. We hold back something in our hearts. We hang on to some cherished desire or cherished purpose. We have some pet sin, and, failing to make that full and complete surrender when temptation come to us, it finds something in our hearts it can lay hold upon. It attaches itself there, and we go down before it.GCB June 8, 1913, page 306.3

Dear friends, let us resolve that for the future in our experience we will put on Christ so fully and completely that no provision shall be made for the flesh, that absolutely everything shall be laid upon the altar of God. We are looking forward with hope to the great outpouring of the Spirit of God upon this people, but the day of visitation of God’s power, the day of baptism by his Holy Spirit, must be and will be preceded by the day of consecration. We cannot obtain the fullness of the promise until there comes the fulness of consecration on our part. When we place all upon the altar, God will honor that consecration, and will respond to our appeals.GCB June 8, 1913, page 306.4

We may go from this meeting with that purpose before us; but I recognize, and God recognizes, that in an evil hour temptation may assail us, and we may go down before it. Now, the apostle recognizes that. He says, “My little children, these things write I unto you, that ye sin not. And if any man sin,”—O there is the gracious provision of our loving Father. God places before us a perfect standard, but in his infinite compassion he recognizes our weakness, and says that “if any man sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous.”GCB June 8, 1913, page 306.5

What shall we do in case of failure in the future? Now, we have come to this meeting, and we have made to the Lord a new consecration. My friends, what shall we do in future failures and mistakes? “As ye have therefore received the Lord Jesus Christ, so walk ye in him.” I know how I received the Lord. I came to the Lord Jesus just as I was. I cried out: “Lord, take me as I am; it is impossible for me to make myself better; I cannot do a single thing to change my heart! O, come in and take away this sin, and give me the victory over it!” My friends, that is the way I found the Lord in my experience. That is the way every man and woman here this morning has found the Lord, and in the future that is the way we are still going to obtain help from God. As we strive to reach that perfect pattern of the Lord Jesus Christ, and failure overtakes us, O, let us remember that as we came to God in the beginning, as we obtained mercy through the Lord Jesus Christ in the beginning of our experience, so that blessed door of mercy a is open to us still!GCB June 8, 1913, page 306.6

I am so thankful that God comes down in his mercy and points out so clearly the way of seeking him that even a child may find the way. I am so thankful, my friends, that the way of salvation is not so complex as to belong to the learned man alone, or to the philosopher, God has so simplified the plan that it is brought down within the comprehension of his people, and even a child may understand how he can get hold of the Lord. Let me read you the word the Lord has given us regarding this: “O Israel, return unto the Lord thy God; for thou hast fallen by thine iniquity.” Hosea 14:I. How shall Israel return? If there is a soul here this morning that has departed from the Lord, how shall he return?—God points out in the next verse the simple way: “Take with you words, and turn to the Lord.”GCB June 8, 1913, page 306.7

God gives us the very words we should employ “Say unto him, Take away all iniquity, and receive us graciously: so will we render the calves of our lips. Asshur shall not save us; we will not ride upon horses; neither will we say any more to the work of our hands, Ye are our gods.” We have said in the past that we can obtain salvation through worldly power. We have said there is help in Asshur; we will go down to Babylon for aid. We have said in our heart, We will never do that thing again. We have thought that by the power of the flesh we could gain salvation; but, O, there is no salvation in the power of man! God says: “I will heal their backsliding, I will love them freely: for mine anger is turned away from him.” That is the gracious promise of God to every soul here this morning. Take with you words, and turn to the Lord, and say unto him, We have sinned, but we desire to come back; and God will recognize that simple prayer on your past. Now, my friends, coming to the Lord and taking hold of him is just as simple as that. It is expressed in those simple words.GCB June 8, 1913, page 306.8

Our petitions are to be offered in faith. I come to God; I have been serving God now for thirty-five years, in fact, practically all my life, yet I come to God now for pardon in precisely the same way that I did in the very beginning. I say, “Lord, I have sinned; I have done wrong; now take away my sin, and forgive me.” Then shall I wait for some feeling that God has accepted me?—O my friends, there is the blessed promise of the Word! After I have made my sincere confession, God tells me to get up from my knees and go my way, believing that God, for Christ’s sake, has forgiven my sins, that I am accepted in the Beloved, and that pardon is written against my name. O, I find so many among our people that failed to have the witness of God’s acceptance! Brethren, it is for us. If we ever obtain salvation in eternity, we must know the salvation of God in our experience today. It is not dependent upon feeling.GCB June 8, 1913, page 306.9

When we go from this meeting, we will go back, as I have said into some dark places; and I have sometimes found this, that when I have been raised away up to the mountain top in my experience, then I must guard against reaction. You know how it was in the case of Elijah. There came a change in Elijah’s experience after his triumph on Carmel’s height. God had given him a great victory over the prophets of Baal; and yet the following night, at the threat of Jezebel, that resolute man of God, who had endured so much, and had been lifted up so high in his experience, became utterly discouraged, fled into the wilderness, and prayed that he might be permitted to die.GCB June 8, 1913, page 306.10

My friends, Satan will come to us after this meeting and will try to plunge us into darkness. When you get back again into that old environment, the enemy will be there, and will try to cast over you a cloud of discouragement. Then it is that you must lay hold on God; then it is that you will need to pray more than you have prayed on this encampment. We have had heavenly sittings together; the Lord has come near and blessed; now we must go out alone, and, with God, battle with the powers of darkness. Then will follow depression, unless we hang onto the power of God by living faith, even though it may seem to us that the heaven is brass over our heads. We must realize that the same God that blessed us here, is with us still; that the same God that came near to us on this encampment, is just as near in our homes as he was here.GCB June 8, 1913, page 306.11

I remember an experience that came to me some years ago, which taught me to differentiate between faith and feeling. While attending a meeting of this character, when I was a young man. I saw my associates obtain a rich blessing from God, which was manifested by great joyousness on their part. But I failed to have those experiences. I went away with an extreme desire for that feeling, and prayed earnestly to God for help. But the feeling did not come; and now I thank God that it did not come; for if it had, ever after in my experience I would have depended on that joyous feeling, to believe that I had God’s blessing. Finally I said: “Lord, my experience is in your hands. If you will not give me the same feeling my associates have, I will be true to you anyway, and I will let you in your own good time send me the joyous flight of feeling.” Just as soon as I came to that resolution in my experience, the blessing of God came in like a flood to my soul. It will be so with you. If Satan casts over any of you the pall of darkness, remember that God stands a little way back in the darkness. He permits it in his love. He is watching the process. He is subjecting you to the winds and the tempests in order that his purpose may be wrought out in your life; and if you will only trust him, he will bring it out right in the end.GCB June 8, 1913, page 306.12

How shall we endure?—I want to give you three simple suggestions. It is not necessary to go through an agonizing process in order to endure, but God has put within our reach three things so simple that if we follow them, our Christian experience, instead of retrograding from this time, will grow brighter and brighter.GCB June 8, 1913, page 307.1

I find it true as I read the Word, as I review the history of the church, that the men and women of power with God, have been men and women of prayer. We cannot obtain the power of God without prayer. If you will be instant in prayer,—every day, three times a day, kneel down before God and commune with his blessed Spirit,—God will pour the strength of Heaven into your lives. I know it because God’s Word teaches it. I know that when I have done that in my own life, there has come the response of God to my efforts. I know God has done that for my brethren. And I know he will do it for every soul here. He is more anxious to bless us than we are to obtain his blessing. The blessings of Heaven are held just above our heads, and we have only to reach up by the medium of prayer to receive fully of God’s mercy and blessing.GCB June 8, 1913, page 307.2

There was one view of prayer that I obtained which revolutionized prayer in my life. I used to think that prayer was an exercise whereby we came to God and convinced him that he ought to bless us; but I have long since abandoned that idea. How could I convince the Lord God of heaven that he ought to bless me? How could I by any feeble words I might speak, change the attitude of God toward me? But I have come to recognize prayer as that exercise whereby I put myself into such relationship to God that he can give me the blessings he is anxious to bestow upon me. He loves me with an everlasting love, and is anxious to give me help; and he has ordained prayer as a means whereby I may obtain help.GCB June 8, 1913, page 307.3

So I say to you, first of all, as you go from this meeting, in order to maintain your experience in God, pray, pray, pray. Every day take time from the busy activities of life, and seek God, and lay your wants before him. If there are trials in your life, place them before him. Remember that the God of heaven is so great that he can not only take cognizance of the movements of the planets and the affairs of the nations of men, but that he can look down upon this earth and see every soul, and can appreciate the experience of every heart. So, my friends, if I have a trial, no matter how small, I bring it to the great God of heaven.GCB June 8, 1913, page 307.4

When the Lord appeared to the centurion and told him to send for Peter, he said, “Send men to Joppa, and call for one Simon, whose surname is Peter: he lodgeth with one Simon a tanner, whose house is by the seaside.” What does that show?—It shows that God knew and took account of Peter’s name and surname. It shows that God knew and took account of where Peter was staying that night. He knew he was staying in the house of a man by the name of Simon. He knew that man’s business. He knew where that man’s house was located. O my friends, if God knew and took account of those experiences of Simon the tanner, he knows and takes account of just such experiences in the life of every one of his children this morning. So let us bring our experiences to the Lord Jesus Christ.GCB June 8, 1913, page 307.5

The next thing I would recommend is Bible study. In second Peter, the third chapter, the eighteenth verse, we read these words, “But grow in grace, and in the knowledge of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.” My friends, the growth in Christ is connected with the growth in knowledge. And we can grow in grace only as we come to this blessed Word and study there the revelation of the character of Jesus Christ. Let us make it a daily study. Every day, two or three times a day, let us pray, and let us have an hour in our homes, every day, in which we can study the Word of God.GCB June 8, 1913, page 307.6

In 1 Peter 2:2, the apostle says, “As new-born babes, desire the sincere milk of the Word, that ye may grow thereby.” In the Seventh-day Adventist Church today there are men and women who are still babes in Christian experience. They ought to be giants in the service of God. There are men and women in the Seventh-day Adventist Church today who must be continually held up. They are learners instead of lifters, when God designs they shall be toilers in the church. Brethren, let us grow into that experience by prayer and by study of the Word. God wants to impart to us the milk of the Word, that we may grow thereby, and become giants in his service and in his work.GCB June 8, 1913, page 307.7

Next to prayer and study of the Word, is work. When you leave this meeting and go back to your homes, every one of you should become a worker for God. Now where will you work? What is your field? I want to tell you that your field, first of all, is right in your own home. Before me this morning a large number of divided homes are represented. There are some here this morning whose husbands are not in the truth. There are some here who have wives that are not in the truth. There are parents here whose children are not in the truth. I know what it is to live in a divided home; for years my father made no profession of religion. It was necessary for my mother to take charge of the religious exercises. But God is able to give you strength to stand in a divided home, and is able to give you wisdom to relate yourself properly to those who do not know the Lord right in your own home circle.GCB June 8, 1913, page 307.8

The best way to work for those in our homes is to live the gospel of Christ before them. Sometimes in our homes I think we are too ardent to talk the truth, while we fail to live the truth. Sometimes our religious activities in our homes take the form of nagging. We are so anxious for our unconverted friends to come to the Lord, that we work unwisely; we nag at them, and they become tired of it, and throw it off.GCB June 8, 1913, page 307.9

We want to live the truth, so that the husband who does not know God, cannot fail to respect Christianity as manifested in the life of his companion. It will win its way in the end. God may even now be setting in operation agencies and influences that will bring the loved one to the Lord. God works in manifold ways.GCB June 8, 1913, page 307.10

I know of a sister who for years prayed for the conversion of her husband. She became almost discouraged. Finally he gave himself to God. Then she could look back and see how God had led him over a certain road, and brought him through this experience. There was loss of property, disaster, bereavement in the home, but little by little the good hand of God had led that man over a road that brought him at last to the point where he acknowledged God, and gave himself to him. If we will hang on to God, I believe he will lead our friends to him at last. So let us work wisely and with discretion.GCB June 8, 1913, page 307.11

If there is one thing in the Seventh-day Adventist Church that is needed today, it is more brotherly and sisterly love. If there is a bane in the Seventh-day Adventist Church, it is the bane of unkind criticism. Let us banish it. Let us seek to come near to one another. We never can drive men into the blessed truth of God; never can give the truth by cold argument; never can convert a man to this truth; we may convince his intellect, but his heart will still remain unchanged. But there is one thing we can do, by God’s grace,—we can love the main into this truth; we can come so near to him in love that his heart will be touched by the winning grace of God; the hard heart will be broken at last, and he will yield himself to the Lord Jesus Christ.GCB June 8, 1913, page 307.12

So let us exercise that love in the church of God, and in whatever field may open before us. As we go back to our homes, let us become in our communities, wherever we are, active agents for God. Let us set a higher standard of Christianity in our neighborhood than has ever been set there before. Men have a right to expect it of us. I profess faith in the coming of the Lord this morning. Have not my friends a right to expect of me a higher consecration of life, a higher standard of religion, than they would of one who does not make such a profession of faith?GCB June 8, 1913, page 307.13

—Yea, verily they have.GCB June 8, 1913, page 307.14

So let us go back to our several communities ressolved that, by God’s help, we will attain a higher standard of Christian living in that community, in our own lives, than we have ever done before. Let us distribute tracts; let us hand out our papers; let us hold Bible readings; let us do active Christian service wherever possible; but my friends, above all else, let us commend this holy religion we profess by the lives we live. It is that which will give potency and power to all our efforts, by God’s grace.GCB June 8, 1913, page 307.15

We cannot take with us this blessed association. As I have listened to my brethren who have preached from this stand, I have wished I could be associated with them when I leave this place. But that is impossible. I go to my home; they go to theirs. But, my friends, I am thankful to God this morning that there is a Friend, the truest in all the world; there is a companionship, the most blessed that this world has ever known, that will go with every one of God’s children. Of this we are assured.GCB June 8, 1913, page 307.16

When Moses was about to die, the leadership of Israel fell upon Joshua. Joshua was a young man, and before him was the unsubdued land of Canaan, the division of the land among the tribes, the subduing of all those great walled cities. Do you remember the word that God gave to Joshua, as recorded in Joshua 1:9? That word was to Joshua, and to every soul here this morning: “Have not I commanded thee? Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee whithersoever thou goest.”GCB June 8, 1913, page 308.1

Every soul here this morning, as he returns to his home, may take with him the blessed Lord Jesus Christ. And, my friends, he is a Friend that sticketh closer than a brother. Let us become acquainted with him. Let us come to know him more and more, and let us take, in future days, without murmuring, the load that he may impose upon us, the experience through which he brings us. Let us not murmur against God; for God will lead us in the right way if we will only trust him. The angel of his presence will go before Israel today, even as he went before Israel anciently, if we will only trust God.GCB June 8, 1913, page 308.2

The scripture found in Psalm 103 has brought comfort to my heart many times (verses 13, 14): “Like as a father pitieth his children, so the Lord pitieth them that fear him. For he knoweth our frame; he remembereth that we are dust.”GCB June 8, 1913, page 308.3

Why does he pity us?—“He knoweth our frame; he remembereth that we are dust.” So, dear friends, as you go back from this meeting, as God leads you in the way he would have you go, take cheerfully the load that he places upon you, because the Heavenly Father will temper that load, will temper that experience, according to his own wisdom. He knows what each of us can stand, and will temper the load accordingly.GCB June 8, 1913, page 308.4

I cannot tell you how forcibly this principle of God’s dealings with man was impressed upon my mind a few days before this meeting. I had cut down a tree, and cut it up into wood. It was at the foot of a hill, and the blocks were too heavy to carry up the hill. There was no way I could draw it up, and so I had to split those blocks up, and carry the slabs one by one up the hill. My little daughter helped me. I knew her strength, and that she was not nearly so strong as I. She asked, “What one shall I carry?” I picked out from that load the slabs, the lighter ones, and gave to her. I took the heavier ones myself. As I did this that scripture flashed into my mind: “Like as a father pitieth his children, so the Lord pitieth them that fear him. For he knoweth our frame; he remembereth that we are dust.”GCB June 8, 1913, page 308.5

My friends, God knows you. He knows you through and through, and if you will only give yourselves to him in coming days, he will choose for you all of life’s experiences, and will give you strength and wisdom and power for every need. O, we serve a blessed God this morning! We serve a blessed Saviour! And the word he gives us is, “Be strong and of a good courage; ... for the Lord thy God is with thee whithersoever thou goest.” May that be the experience of every soul here this morning, for his name’s sake. Amen.GCB June 8, 1913, page 308.6

DAILY PROGRAM (Except Sabbath)

Conference Proceedings. THIRTY-FOURTH MEETING