An Individual Soul Winning Campaign for 1914
By Editor
An Individual Soul Winning Campaign for 1914
God has opened before us a new year. It ought to be to every Seventh-day Adventist the most important year of his life. We are one year nearer the finishing of the work, the close of probation, the judgment, and the coming of our Lord. What can we do to make this year the most blessed year of our experience and the most glorious year in the history of this message? We can set for ourselves the definite aim of winning at least one soul for Christ and for his cause. Let every member of this denomination make this his aim for this new year. We love this cause, we love the message committed to us, we love the souls for whom Christ died. And now to us who own him as our Saviour, he has committed the work of bearing his final witness to the last generation of men. Can God expect less of us than that we win one soul for him during the year? If each Seventh-day Adventist will take that as his or her aim, laboring and praying earnestly to that end, we shall double our membership within the year. Such a consummation would bring joy to each individual in the denomination, and to heaven itself. And if we, by God's help, can do that during 1914, we can do it again in 1915, and so on till the work is finished. There is absolutely nothing impossible or visionary about the proposition. To double our denominational membership within the year means only that each member shall win one soul to the truth in twelve months. Is that impossible with all heaven interested in our success and with the unlimited power of God behind us? — Surely not. It is possible, and if possible, should it be considered unreasonable for us to set it as our aim? When Jesus commissioned his disciples to go “into all the world, and preach the gospel to every creature,” he was not speaking to ministers only. He was speaking to every individual member of his church. It is true that each individual Christian cannot go into all parts of the world to carry the gospel in person. But he can carry the gospel to all parts of the earth without going in person. He can carry it there by his letters and by the printed page he sends. The great commission is therefore to every individual that has accepted Christ as his Saviour. It is to me who write these words, and it is to you who read them. When God looks upon the record of our lives, he will look for fruit — for souls saved through our instrumentality. If we have no such fruit to show in the record of our life work, it is certain that we shall be classed among the barren, unfruitful, and unprofitable. When salvation came to us and we accepted it, all heaven was rejoiced; but it was not in God's purpose that it should stop with us. There is no such thing as stagnant Christianity. Health-giving water always flows. The lamp that is fulfilling the purpose for which it was made is the lamp that shines. It is God's purpose that each soul to whom the light of truth comes shall pass it on to another, and that other to another, and so on. We love the truth; but do we ever think what it would mean to us if the one who brought us the truth had done as so many of us are doing, and had not passed it on? We would still be in the world, and perhaps of the world. But if the denomination, as a band of individual workers, will move forward in unbroken rank in this matter, the year 1914 will be the most glorious year in the history of this message. We accepted the truth with glad hearts and rejoice in it today. Others will receive it as gladly as we and rejoice in it also. Let us consider for a moment what this will mean. We have been struggling with our institutional and denominational debts. We have found ourselves face to face with a perplexing situation; with a depleted treasury; with as many missionaries in the field as we can support; and have actually found it necessary to put a brake on the wheels of progress in all our mission fields lest we should incur debts that would swamp us. In the effort to relieve the financial situation, we have tried to spring the Fifteen-cent-a-week Fund to twenty cents a week, and have been only partially successful. But if every member of the denomination will determine at once that he will be a part of the new program, the financial problem will solve itself automatically. That means more than a mere matter of finance. It means that the entire organization will spring free from its handicap and go forward not only to fill present openings, but to invite new ones. And we shall always find God ahead of us. Then, instead of having something behind us holding us back, we shall cut loose from that and have something ahead of us drawing us on. If we take up this work now and carry it through to success, it will mean the doubling of all our receipts. There will be twice as much tithe turned in to our treasuries, twice as much Sabbath school contributions, twice as much for foreign missions, twice as much for home work, twice as many to support the cause, twice as many to enter our schools to prepare for the work, twice as many to draw from for foreign mission recruits, and twice as much to support the work at home and abroad. It will mean also the doubling of the work of all our institutions. This will be most quickly noticeable in our publishing houses; but our sanitariums and our schools will also know of it without delay. But it will mean more than this. It will mean that soon the work will be finished, and our blessed Lord will come. How Shall We Go About It?
In the first place, every person who reads these lines should become a center for the propagation of the idea, and should agitate the program among his associates, and go to work at once to put the program into operation. Every conference officer should adopt it, and pass it on to every minister in the conference; every minister should adopt it, and faithfully set it before every individual member with whom he comes in contact, and before every church he visits. Every church elder should adopt it, and by example and precept and influence secure its adoption by every member of his church. Every school should adopt it, and leave no effort untried until every converted attendant is doing his part. Every sanitarium and every publishing house should adopt it, and seek to induce every member of its company of employees to enter wholeheartedly into the campaign. We have done much missionary work in the past, but a great deal of it has been done in a more or less haphazard manner. In this campaign we set before ourselves the definite aim of at least one soul for this message during the next twelve months. We will work for that, we will pray for that, and we will hold on for it until we get it. We will have to make more than one person the object of our endeavors, and we will have to follow up our work with earnestness and with much prayer. But if we do, God will give us the victory, and we shall have souls for our hire. Let no one fall back in the harness now. Whoever does so may know that to just that extent he is interfering with the success of the whole undertaking. But whoever, in this matter, comes up to the33help of the Lord may have the satisfaction of knowing that the success of the undertaking is due in part to him. One soul for this message during 1914! No one will say that is too many. May God depend on you to do your part? What do you say? C. M. S.