The Quarterly Meetings by John Norton Loughborough

Pacific Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Oakland, California · Jun 10, 1875

The Quarterly Meetings.

By John Norton Loughborough

We earnestly urge all our brethren and sisters to attend the quarterly meetings in their respective districts, whether there is preaching or not. It will of course encourage the minister, if he attends, to see a full attendance of all the members in the district. How much more need that all turn out if there is no minister, that the director may be encouraged in his work, and the church be encouraged where the quarterly meeting is held.

Where there is more than one church in a district, as is the case in several of the districts, it is expected to hold the meetings alternately with these churches. In the matter of attendance at these meetings we have a good opportunity to carry out the Golden Rule of doing to others as we would have others do to us. When the meeting is in our own church we love to have the brethren and sisters from the other churches in the district meet with us. Shall we not do them the favor to make some little effort to meet with them?

In a district where there are two churches, with their quarterly meetings alternating, it would only require the labor of our going to the other church twice a year. This is no great task as the churches in any one district in our State, as yet, are not very far apart.

Three times in a year all the males in ancient Israel were required to meet in Jerusalem from all parts of Canaan. One of those feasts lasted seven days. If you let this one stand for our camp-meeting, and we make some little effort to get to the quarterly meeting in the church away from our own, twice a year, it would be a slight comparison with what they did, especially when we consider the long journey they made to attend their gatherings. They met, expecting to "see the land that is very far off." We meet to converse of that land that is nigh, and to cheer each other with the prospect of the speedy consummation of our hope in the coming of our Master in "this generation."

The Jews met to praise God for his goodness, to "rejoice before the Lord," to make vows to God, to pay vows already made, to show through their types and appropriate bloody offerings their faith in a Saviour to come. We meet to talk of that High Priest in the heavens who has been here, buffeted, afflicted, tempted in all points like as we are. With the benevolent heart of a tender father he pities us. "Like as a father pities his children, so the Lord pities them that fear him." As we meet we contemplate him with a heart all compassion and pity, in the heavens at the right hand of the Father's throne, with all power in Heaven and earth at his command.

We meet also to rejoice before the Lord for his blessings to us as individuals, to rejoice in him for the wonderful manner in which he is causing his truth to find way to many hearts not only in our own language, but among those of foreign birth. As we meet and rejoice in God for these things, we lay plans and make vows to lift still more in the future, with our means, our influence, our example and individual labor in trying to get these truths before the minds of our fellow-men.

Let us not forsake the assembling of ourselves together as the manner of some is, but let us exhort one another, and so much the more as we see the day approaching. J. N. L.