p. 52 | DEAD PEOPLE

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Jan 22, 1901

DEAD PEOPLE

“All that God is doing in this world in any way, He is doing by dead people.” God uses me in proportion as I am dead,—dead to self, dead to pleasure, dead to the world, dead to human praise or blame, dead to personal interest, dead to everything but God,—so dead that there are only two beings in the universe alive, God and myself; and of those one is dead, yet alive. It is no longer I that live, but God that liveth in me. So that self is dead beyond hope of resurrection, and Christ liveth through all the powers of my triple being, and absolutely controls those powers for His own purposes.

Blessed deadness! Glorious living! Happy freedom! “God forbid that I should glory, save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom the world is crucified unto me, and I unto the world.” I do not care for the world; its pleasures have no power to entice me; its riches I count but dross; its applause is a hollow mockery; its society, its ease, its praise, I have not the faintest desire to enjoy; its persecutions have no power to swerve me from my purpose.

“The world is crucified unto me.” It has no use for me. It had no use for my Master; it despised Him; it killed Him. It despises me; it will kill me. Hence there is no love lost between us. Dead! dead to everything but God, to be used by Him as He may wish!

Let no man think this death of self is easily secured. It is the most difficult part of a satisfactory religious experience. Self dies hard. Crucifixion means rough handling, humiliation hard to endure; it means agony and solitude, the assaults of devils and men; it means the piercing spike and the darkening heavens; but, thank God, it also means resurrection, triumph, and God’s glory.

“Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone: but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit.”—Selected.