Our Second Birthday by S. Thurston

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Jul 13, 1911

Our Second Birthday

By S. Thurston

S. THURSTON

IT has become a well-established custom among God's remnant church, and a good custom it is, to make birthday offerings to the work of God. But what about the second birthday? Said the Redeemer, “Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born again, he can not see the kingdom of God.” John 3: 3. Would it not, therefore, be equally appropriate to make a new-birth offering to foreign missions on the anniversary of the day when we entered into covenant relations with God—the day which answers to our more perfect conversion, or new birth? And in view of the exceeding great sacrifice on the part of both the Father and the Son in redemption’s work, by making provision for this second birth, let us not be content to offer merely one penny a year for the number of years since the precious Sabbath blessing came to us, but let it rather be a sacrificial offering of every penny, nickel, and dime, or even dollar, that has heretofore been spent for unnecessary expenditures in our eating, drinking, dressing, photographing, etc., in order that those who have not a true knowledge of the Father or Son (Eze. 20: 20) may also be born again, and thus become partakers of the divine nature, and enter into the kingdom of our God.

What relief and joy might this inflowing sacrificial stream bring, not only to the Foreign Mission Board and our self-sacrificing missionaries, and our neighbors across the sea, who sit in darkness, but to ourselves, by the witness of the indwelling spirit of Christ, who died for us!

This offering, being purely a saving from unnecessary expenditures, need in no way interfere with the stream of offerings already flowing into the treasury.

San Fernando, Cal.