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Tried With Fire

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Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Oct 18, 1906

FromReview and Herald, Vol. 83, No. 42.

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Tried With Fire

By G. W. E.

G. W. E.
SEVENTH-DAY ADVENTISTS will be a tried people. Each one of them will be tried as by fire. Each one of them will be brought into circumstances, and will have to pass through experiences, that will mean a life-and-death struggle with the powers of darkness which are pressing upon the soul from without and from within. The divine plowshare of trouble and trial will cut its furrows through the heart's desires, deep and long. The angry billows of temptation will rise higher and higher. The tempest of affliction will sweep in with a fury that seems to know no bounds. But there is an all-wise purpose in it all. The Lord “doth not afflict willingly.” A loving, tender, pitying eye is watching the process of refining, the work of purification, and a fatherly heart is waiting and hoping and praying and yearning that the dross might be successfully removed and burned up in the furnace of affliction, and only the good, the solid, the stable, remain. “Now for a season, if need be, ye are in heaviness through manifold temptation: that the trial of your faith, being much more precious than of gold that perisheth, though it be tried with fire, might be found unto praise and honor and glory at the appearing of Jesus Christ.”
O that the tempted one, the tried one, the afflicted one, might look away from the awful pressure of the moment, to that glorious time when the Refiner's work is done! O that he might be willing, for the sake of the eternal joys of the near future, aye, for the sake of becoming an efficient instrument in God's hand to help some soul into the kingdom, to endure the cross, to despise the shame, to have the Lord trim and cut and burn and chisel until the perfect character of Jesus appears in the flesh!
Let not despair enter into the hearts of any thus tried. Painful though it be, lonely hours of weeping and agonizing though it bring, darkness though it cause to overshadow us, yet it will have an end, it will not last always. Hold on, trust, believe, watch, and pray, and the result will be glorious.
College View, Neb.