Ever A Burden For The Salvation Of Souls
And what a burden of soul for the salvation of believers was that human agent strengthened to carry! The record of the life seems to leave not a moment when this or that need of the church was not immediately pressing; or when some worker’s need of encouragement or warning was not laid upon the heart. Let me illustrate by one example:SPIAM 63.3
In 1932 I was at a large camp meeting in Sydney, Australia. I had spoken of how the agent in this gift, while living in Australia, was given messages for Europe, for Africa, for America, for work and workers in all the ends of the earth. As an illustration having a local appeal, I read a three-line note written by Mrs. White from the Australian village of Cooranbong, where she was living in 1900, alongside the Avondale school. Across the sea to another continent she sent the message to a brother; whom I called John Blank: “My instructor said, ‘John Blank, you are departing from the faith once delivered to the people of God.’”SPIAM 63.4
From out that little cottage, set on the edge of the Australian bush, the appeal went across the world to a beloved worker in danger. It shows how the lines of counsel and entreaty were always running out from the place of that gift, touching the work and workers in all the world. After the meeting, an elderly lady in black came to me to speak of Mrs. White. “I know who Mr. Blank was,” she said. “I worked for Mrs. White in 1900, as housekeeper. Night after night, in the early morning hours, I was awakened by Mrs. White’s voice in prayer. I heard her praying for Mr. Blank, entreating God not to let him go, to hold him, and keep him, and save him.”SPIAM 64.1
It is one glimpse of the spirit in which this gift of the Spirit of prophecy was ever exercised. With all its stern warnings against sin and the wrong course, it spoke ever in the spirit of Christ. It is “the testimony of Jesus Christ,” the voice of the Good Shepherd who came to seek and save the lost.SPIAM 64.2
Men of the world have recognized a spirit beyond the ordinary in these instructions to the church. J. A. Rippey told of leaving a volume of “Testimonies for the Church” on a train seat. When he returned, a gentleman, who apologized for having picked it up, said: “I hold a chair on the faculty of a university in New York. I am continually reading books, but this is the finest literature I have ever read. Where can I get some of these books?”SPIAM 64.3