Shall Our Churches Be Weighed Down With Debt?
It is dishonoring to God for our churches to be burdened with debt. This state of things need not exist. It shows wrong management from beginning to end, and it is a dishonor to the God of heaven. Read and study prayerfully the fourth chapter of Zechariah. Then read the first chapter of Haggai, and see if this representation does not apply to you. While you have thought much of your own selves, of your own selfish interests, you have either neglected to arise and build, or have built on hired money, and have not made donations to free the church buildings from debt. Will you consider what it is your duty to do? Year after year passes by, and very little sacrifice is made to lessen the debt. The interest swallows up the means that should be used to pay off the principal.10MR 124.1
“Slothful servants” is the charge that God makes of those in the churches. His will is not done when sacred things are left to remain in a withered, neglected condition. Self-sacrifice, self-denial in every church would change the order of things. “The silver is mine, and the gold is mine, saith the Lord of hosts” (Haggai 2:8). When that gold and silver is used for selfish purposes, to gratify ambition or pride or selfish indulgence, as had been done, God is dishonored. Can those who are representative men be so sound asleep that they do not comprehend that the state of things that exists is a result of neglect on their part? When the people chosen by God embellish their own houses, and invest God's money in bicycles and various things for selfish gratification, knowing that the very means thus used should be used to keep the house of God in the very best condition, that no means may be taken from the treasury to defray running expenses, they cannot be blessed.10MR 124.2
I have a message from the Lord. The churches must awaken from their torpor, and think of these things. “The silver is mine, and the gold is mine, saith the Lord of hosts.” Are we as families appropriating the Lord's silver and gold to selfish purposes, and doing nothing to lighten the debt on His house? The churches are burdened with debt, not because it is impossible for them to be freed, but because of selfish indulgence on the part of the members. By this neglect God is dishonored, and if He binds about your resources, be not blind as to the cause.10MR 125.1
When you place the Lord first, and realize that the Lord's house is dishonored by debt, God will bless you. Every debt upon every house of worship might now have been paid if the members had not been in a state of torpor, unable to devise and plan with the most earnest, zealous effort to cancel the debt. When this is done, rededicate the church, without a debt upon it, to God as His house.10MR 125.2
“Now therefore saith the Lord of hosts: Consider your ways. Ye have sown much, and bring in little; ye eat, but ye have not enough; ye drink, but ye are not filled with drink; ye clothe you, but there is none warm; and he that earneth wages earneth wages to put it into a bag with holes.... Ye looked for much, and, lo, it came to little; and when ye brought it home, I did blow upon it. Why? saith the Lord of hosts. Because of mine house that is waste, and ye run every man to his own house. Therefore the heaven over you is stayed from dew, and the earth is stayed from her fruit” (Haggai 1:5, 6, 9, 10).10MR 125.3
Let those that have work bringing the highest wages come forward and act a part proportionate to the wages they receive. Let the men who have limited wages have an interest in this matter also. Do what you can, and lay aside something besides your tithe money. Have you a box for this purpose? Explain to your children that it is the self-denial box, in which you lay aside every penny, every shilling, that you can obtain and do not need to spend for actual necessities. It is for the Lord's house. It is sacred self-denial money. It is a gift to the Lord, to lift the God-dishonoring debt from the meeting house. Doing this, every member of the family will be blessed.—Manuscript 116, 1897, pp. 8, 9, 12-15. (.)10MR 126.1
White Estate
Washington, D. C.,
July 22, 1980.