A GREAT many persons are anxious to get into heaven; but it seems to me that the time has come for us to be more anxious to bring heaven down here where we now are. You and I can have such a large sample of heaven here below that we shall be able to tell from personal experience whether we shall enjoy heaven throughout eternity. If we misuse the share of heaven we secure here, we should misuse heaven's blessings if we were there. Some persons get the impression that because the devil is turned loose here, we can not have any part of heaven here; but the devil was in heaven a long time before God cast him out. So God has actually passed through the experience of maintaining a heaven with a devil in it.
Paul said, “I have learned, in whatsoever state I am, therewith to be content.” Phil. 4:11. Paul had come to the place where, if it had been necessary for him to spend an eternity here, it would still have been heaven to him. “Sweet peace, the gift of God's love,” can so flood our minds here that the present will be a foretaste of heaven. It is certainly true that, all through eternity, new revelations of truth will open up before us as fast as we are able to take them in; and in the same manner, God is giving us all the heaven here below that we can take in at present. So take heed how you learn now. Many children think that it is no use for them to learn the alphabet,—that they will soon pass on to higher grades; but they will find that they can not advance without mastering the first principles. There are many Christians who are doing the same thing. “Of whom we have many things to say, and hard to be uttered; . . . for when for the time ye ought to be teachers, ye have need that one teach you again which be the first principles of the oracles of God.” Heb. 5:11, 12.
Daniel said, “They that be teachers shall shine as the brightness of the firmament.” Dan. 12:3, margin. There is not much happiness in life until we get to teaching others. A man who is taking physical exercise, breathing pure air, has a clear skin and bright eyes. So also a man who is passing on to others what God has given to him has a clear and bright Christian experience. He is a man of whom many are saying, “How I love him!”
But we are not to pray to be beautiful and grand merely for admiration; for that is one of the devil's tricks. Suppose the devil should get some of you to look at me; do you suppose he would get you to see some good characteristics that I have been agonizing to secure?—No; he would find some weak point in me, of which I perhaps as yet know nothing, and he would get you to see that, and then, by beholding, you would become changed. Christ said, “Look unto me, and be ye saved, all ye ends of the earth.” Isa. 45:22. The moment we are conscious that others are admiring us, we may know that something is wrong; but when they admire the truth we have, then we may be confident that it is God who is working through us.
We are in the time when we must be literally filled with truth, so saturated with it that no one can take it away from us. You may think that I am making that too strong. But the time will soon come when truth will be so mixed with error that the very elect can scarcely distinguish between them. As an illustration: I have been told that in theaters the scenery is often painted so perfectly that, if the spectators' lives depended upon it, they could not tell where the real left off and the artificial began. If men in Chicago can do this, the devil, who has been studying for centuries, can certainly do more wonderful, more miraculous things. Yet there is a taste about truth that if we have once feasted on it, we need not be deceived by the counterfeit. If I should put a piece of onion on your tongue, and then tell you that it was turnip, you would not believe me. But suppose I should bring down fire from heaven to convince you, would it have any effect?—No, indeed; for your taste would still convince you of the deception. Elijah brought down fire from heaven to convince people of a fact, but it was not so wonderful as was the faith displayed when he saw a little cloud, no bigger than a man's hand, and could tell the people, with assurance, that it would rain. There are, no doubt, some in this room to-day who will see men in whom they have had the fullest confidence, men perhaps with whom they have served on committees, who will apparently bring fire down from heaven to prove that they have the truth, and yet it will not be truth. The devil has done many wonderful things to deceive men, and if it were possible, he would deceive the very elect; but they have acquired the taste of truth so thoroughly that they can not be deceived.
We are to keep on taking in truth, and asking God to teach us the things we most need. Do not get the idea that you individually will need the whole Bible. There is something in the Bible for every sinner who ever lived, but all have not needed in every particular the same treatment. Our work at the sanitarium illustrates this point. There we have a great number of treatments, but they are not all given to one patient. Seventy-five thousand persons have been there. We have had some treatment for them all; but we did not give to each one all the treatments that are in the institution. The Spirit is to guide us into all truth. We eat food every day, but we do not eat all that is in the world. You and I are not going to learn, here below, all the truth that there is to be learned; for if we did, we should not have anything to learn through eternity. But if we let the Spirit guide us, we shall learn the things we shall need to use while we are here. Suppose I had spent half a lifetime in learning how to fill teeth, and then never had an occasion to fill a tooth; would not that be a foolish thing? But if I have been studying under God instead of under man, there is not one thing that I have learned in medicine or science or the gospel that I shall not have occasion to use, either here or in eternity. If we will let God guide us day by day, he will lead us into just the things we ought to know. Have you not been much disappointed sometimes by meeting persons who know a great deal about the Bible, and yet when you came to them, broken-hearted, they could not help you? Again, perhaps you met some one else who does not know so much about the Bible, but yet he was able to bind up the broken heart. There are many things in the Bible which, if practiced, will make our lives so beautiful that every one who meets us will hunger and thirst after the righteousness of Christ as revealed in our lives.
We spend too much time trying to bring men to Christ. We ought to bring Christ to men. “And I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all men unto me.” If you have a genuine magnet, even if it is somewhat rusty, you can pick up iron fragments whenever you wave it over them. But if you have a false magnet,—even though it is bright and shining,—it will not attract the fragments. So you and I can go out and try to bring men to Christ; but if we have not the real Christ with us, we shall not have the power to draw them.
There are many persons in this world who have lines of care written all over their faces. Sinners wish to meet persons with whom “all things work together for good,”—persons who have learned, “in whatsoever state” they are, “therewith to be content.” A young woman came to me last night and said: “I am so angry, and I just can't help it; for I know I have been treated wrong. I have been spoken to in the most horrid manner.” I told the girl that Christ is no respecter of persons, and that if he could lock the mouths of lions for the good of his servant Daniel, he could have locked the mouth of the woman who had been mistreating her, if it had not been for her own good to have such things said to her. Joseph's brothers tried to make his life miserable; but the more evil they did to him, the more they pushed him toward the throne of Egypt.
If we could only learn the lesson that what hurts us, actually hurts Christ more, then we should not feel so badly over some things. I used to be so sensitive that I would worry when I was mistreated and trampled on; but since I have learned that it is Christ who permits these things, that it is Christ who is trampled on, it has been a wonderful help to me. When anybody hurts you, brethren and sisters, they hurt Christ more than they do you. Christ says that he that touches you, touches the apple of his eye. Zech. 2:8. I told that young woman that no one could say anything to her unless God permitted it. She then said, “I don't wish to talk with you, because you make me think that there must be something in me that needs to be taken out.” I told her that that was just it. That there were some things in her that needed to be purified. The tears came to the poor girl's eyes, and she got down on her knees and prayed for the woman who had abused her.
Years ago when I was working in a medical mission in New York, we gathered in children who were so dirty and filthy that I was afraid to have them come near me. I began teaching them, telling them that as a father pities his children, so God pities them; but they knew nothing about a father's love. All that they had ever known of father were cuffs and scoldings, so I could not teach them the love of God in that way. They were absolute strangers to love. I asked myself, “What shall I do to help these children?” The answer came back, “Love them yourself.” I asked God to help me in my endeavors to benefit those children, inasmuch as I was doing it unto him. When I left New York, the children had become closely attached to me, and I loved them. Truly God blessed my efforts.
Every time you or I drive some one to tears, we are causing Christ to suffer. As long as there is sorrow on earth, there will be sorrow in heaven. Think you that Christ's sufferings were limited to the cross?—The sufferings of the cross were scarcely a tithe of the other pangs the Saviour has had to suffer. Every180time a soul is born into the kingdom, Christ has to suffer. Every time we sin and backslide, Christ has to suffer anew. Christ will have to keep suffering over and over again until the last soul is redeemed. Read Col. 1:27.
Let us, then, work from this hour for humanity; for only thus can we work for Christ. Let us find our sweetest pleasure in working in our own homes, and then they will be miniatures of the home to which we are going. Let us begin to have heaven here. “Beloved, now are we the sons of God, and it doth not yet appear what we shall be.”
I thank God that I live in the time when the truth is being revealed so clearly. The great work of translation will begin right here below, and you and I shall go over into the next world, and continue, through all the ages, the glorious transformation that was begun here. May God fill our lives with the blessings of this truth.