p. 24 | Our Union Conference Meetings

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Dec 11, 1913

Our Union Conference Meetings

THERE has been arranged for the coming winter months a series of union conference meetings for the various union conferences in North America. These meetings will quite fully occupy the entire winter. The first one closed last week at South Lancaster, Mass.

It is planned to hold in connection with each meeting a ministerial institute. These institutes and the conference sessions following are most important occasions. The large majority of our conference workers will be brought together. What will result from these days of prayer, Bible study, and spiritual communion? Will our workers be content merely to transact the ordinary routine of business, elect officers, pass resolutions, and return to their fields to continue their work on the plane of past Christian experience? This is unbelievable. The work of God demands, the time in which we live demands, that these meetings shall be Pentecostal occasions.

We cannot afford to content ourselves with the measure of past blessings. God has greater things in store for his people. He desires to clothe the ministers of his word with his own divine power. This is what we all need. We are the bearers of beautiful truths. We have a great church organization, creditable institutions, but we must look beyond the material things for help to enable us to finish this work in this generation. There is needed over and above organizations and institutions the spirit within the wheels which shall furnish the mighty, moving, motive power by which God can finish this work in righteousness.

That this good spirit was felt by all the brethren assembled at the Atlantic Union Conference we verily believe. Writing of the blessings received there, Elder J. H. Evans says:—

“Our institute is nearing its close. It has been a serious time with us. Men and women have laid bare their hearts and prayed for the Holy Spirit. Hearts have been searched, and wrongs have been righted, as men have pleaded for grace and for the infilling of the Spirit of God. God has blessed many in a large measure, and these are still unsatisfied. It is truly good to be here. Pentecostal days have come. The time is here when we are warranted in looking for the latter rain.”

May the rich blessings enjoyed by our brethren in South Lancaster sweep on in ever-increasing power, filling our brethren and sisters in the succeeding conferences with the same hungering and thirsting after God, and with the indwelling fulness of his Holy Spirit.