GO TO GOD by Geo. W. Parker

The Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Jun 30, 1868

GO TO GOD.

By Geo. W. Parker

LET this be our way. Seek not to find ease among men, but peace with God. He knows the language of his children, and will not mistake it. Yea, though there be weakness, he has promised strength; he will bear with infirmities, for he is all-powerful, and will give the most strength when we feel the greatest weakness. Are we passing through afflictions? let it prove a refiner’s fire to purify us for a heavenly home. In the refining of choice metals the object of the refiner is to bring them up to a higher standard of purity and worth, and they are heated until they receive the likeness, and reflect the image of the refiner. Therefore let us reflect the image of the heavenly, for we must be purified to walk the streets of transparent gold in the city of God. The Jerusalem above is free, the mother of us all, out of which will come the children of God, the redeemed of the earth out of every nation, kindred, tongue, and people, to take possession of their inheritance, the earth made new. And to fit us for this, “afflictions are as needful as consolations.” For without the one we could not estimate the value of the other. The word of God gives proof of the assertion; for Jonah’s whale teaches a good lesson as well as Pisgah’s top. And a man may sometimes learn as much from being a night or a day in the deep as from being forty days in the mount. Thus we see Jonah come out of the whale cured of rebellion. And we see Moses go up into the mount with “meekness,” and “come down” and break the tables with “indignation.” We also see three chosen disciples attending their Master in the mount and “falling asleep there.” And what a lesson does this convey to our minds? If you meet with no opposition, no troubles, no scorn, no afflictions, and are not coming up “through much tribulation,” then you are indeed asleep. And as Christ called his sleeping disciples in the mount the “third time,” so now in these last days he would arouse your sleeping energies by the third-call of his angel. And let us use the means and privileges God has given us; and to ourselves apply this language used by the Saviour to his sleeping disciples, Mark xiv, 42, “Rise up, let us go; lo, he that betrayeth me is at hand.” In all your distresses, in all your moanings, go to him; pour out your tears to him. Not only fire, but even water, where it wants a vent, will break upward. These drop not only into our own lap, but they will fall on his, and he hath a bottle to put them in, if ye empty them there; they shall return in wine of strong consolation. It is well for you to be clothed in sackcloth while you tarry in the wilderness. Prosperity might forever cast down your soul.

GEO. W. PARKER.

Rochester, N. Y.