Earnestness Is Necessary

In this age, just prior to the second coming of Christ in the clouds of heaven, the Lord calls for men who will be earnest and prepare a people to stand in the great day of the Lord. The men who have spent long terms in the study of books are not revealing in their lives that earnest ministry which is essential for this last time. They do not bear a simple, straightforward testimony. Among ministers and students there is need of the infusion of the Spirit of God. The prayerful, earnest appeals that come from the heart of a whole-souled messenger will create convictions. It will not need the learned men to do this; for they depend more on their learning from books than upon their knowledge of God and Jesus Christ whom He has sent. All who know the only true and living God will know Jesus Christ, the only-begotten Son of God, and will preach Jesus Christ and Him crucified....

Does anyone suppose that the messages of warning will not come to those whom God reproves? The ones reproved may rise up in indignation and seek to bring the law to bear upon God’s messenger, but in doing this, they are not bringing the law upon the messenger, but upon Christ, who gave the reproof and the warning. When men endanger the work and cause of God by their own wrong course of action, shall they hear no voice of reproof? If the wrongdoer only were concerned, and the work reached no farther than him, he alone should have the words of warning; but when his course of action is doing positive harm to the cause of truth, and souls are imperiled, God requires that the warning be as broad as the injury done. The testimonies will not be hindered. The words of rebuke and warning, the plain “Thus saith the Lord,” will come from God’s appointed agencies; for the words do not originate with the human instrument; they are from God, who appointed them their work.

If a suit is instituted in earthly tribunals, and God suffers it to come to trial, it is that His own name may be glorified. But a woe will be upon the man who gives himself to do this work. God reads the motives, whatever they may be. I pray that the Lord will teach our brethren to be straightforward, and make no compromise in the matter. The cause of God has been bruised and wounded by any such men connecting with it, and the sooner they are separated from it, the better....

God calls for men of decided fidelity. He has no use in an emergency for two-sided men. He wants men who will lay their hand upon a wrong work and say, “This is not according to the will of God.”—Letter 19 1/2, 1897.

 Selected Messages Book 2, pp.152,153
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Photo: Pastor Rafael Perez of Eternal Gospel Church, W. Palm Beach, FL 
Source: http://eternalgospelherald.com/World%20News.htm
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