THE GENERAL CONFERENCE by Earnest A. Raymond

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Mar 26, 1901

THE GENERAL CONFERENCE

By Earnest A. Raymond

EARNEST A. RAYMOND

A GENERAL conference of the remnant Church of Christ is but a little way in the future; and who is able to declare it is not the last that will ever be held in a world fast approaching its dissolution? Issues will there be settled for eternity; decisions will there be reached in the lives of individuals and in the progress of the closing work, which can never be recalled. Brethren, one and all, has not God been speaking to us of late? has not the Spirit been impressing unmistakably upon our hearts the necessity of being prepared for a special manifestation of His power? Can there be any doubt that the time has come for God to work, and that He intends to reveal His presence in a manner not seen since Pentecostal times?

“Our God is a consuming fire.” To-day, as in days of old, His Spirit proclaims to the Church: “Awake, awake; put on thy strength, O Zion; put on thy beautiful garments, O Jerusalem, the holy city: for henceforth there shall no more come into thee the uncircumcised and the unclean. . . . Be ye clean, that bear the vessels of the Lord.”

Those perished quickly from the earth, who, in Israel’s time, when God came near and led the “Church in the wilderness,” were so rash as to offer strange fire before Him. Peter said, “Thou hast not lied unto men, but unto God;” and the record of the tragic death of Ananias and Sapphira has been handed down as a striking example of the Spirit’s work in separating the true from the false, a warning till the end of time.

“And by the hands of the apostles were many signs and wonders wrought among the people. . . . And of the rest durst no man join himself to them: but the people magnified them. And believers were the more added to the Lord, multitudes both of men and women.” When God, in His Spirit’s power, walks up and down among us, how quickly will the camp be cleansed! Then all who will shall “drink into one Spirit,” and receiving spiritual eyesight, shall joyfully exclaim, “If God be for us, who can be against us?” But till men are willing to allow and hasten the coming of that glad time, they must put their trust in a broken reed, the arm of flesh.

The great questions confronting each of us are, Where stand I? and, How shall I prepare? As Israel’s priest in the ancient times ministered in the sanctuary on the great day of atonement, every one in Israel’s camp bowed himself in repentance and humility of heart before the Lord. In fervent prayer and deep searching of heart, in later times the early Church awaited its baptism with power from on high.

Shall we, the remnant Church, be found wanting at such a time as this? Awaiting the descent of that power by which our God will perform a work in the earth, and “cut it short in righteousness,” can any of us afford to let the oil burn out of our lamps, until, empty, we have no light with which to welcome the return, to usher the entering in?

Let us watch and pray as never before. Let us, by drinking, day by day, come into the Spirit’s unity. Let us yield ourselves to His voice and leading; let every “schism” be healed, every difference with our brethren be harmonized by giving room for divine love to triumph.

Beloved brethren of the laity, as the time approaches for this most solemn and important occasion, shall we allow our representatives to assemble without our earnest, prevailing prayers in their behalf? Prevailing prayer bears with it the life co-operation of the suppliant. If ever those whose gift and work it is to labor in word and doctrine needed our sympathy and help and Heaven’s blessing, it is now.

We stand on Canaan’s border-land. For a little moment, as it were, our chosen men advance

scan well the road, obtain a foretaste of the blessings just before,—of Israel’s promised home,—and plan for onward march. Pray God it may be so, and not an ill report of cities walled to heaven, of giants in the way, the sons of Anak there.

No power of earth or all the realms of darkness can stand before the organization of the Captain of the hosts of God. We must learn to stand still if need be, to see the salvation of our God. Let us cease to reckon from a merely human standpoint, but learn to demonstrate this test-problem from the arithmetic of heaven, “If God be for us, who can be against us?”

Pray God for a good report, an onward movement all along the line; but settle first between yourselves and God that you will stand by the Calebs and the Joshuas. Shall we cast stones at them as they return, then weep and wail through the long, long night that follows? Shall we choose a captain to return to Egypt, and be compelled, without sight of the promised land, to wander and die in our wilderness of sin? Instead, let the glad response arise from every heart, “Let us go up at once, and possess it; for we are well able to overcome it.”

Brethren in the ministry, where shall we be found, and what shall be the record and results of this occasion, so far as we are concerned? We approach a crisis, a turning-point in the progress of the deadly malady that consumes the Church. Well indeed has it been said that “Battle Creek is the heart whose pulse-beats are felt around the world.” Shall we not yield ourselves to be healed by the touch of Heaven? Shall we not surrender at last to the Holy Spirit, and walk from this time forth in the strength and vigor of the new creation’s eternal youth?

As we return to our fields of labor, shall matters then go on as before? “Having begun in the Spirit,” shall we then be “made perfect by the flesh”? Having witnessed and experienced at the Conference as never before the wonderful unifying and organizing power of the Spirit, shall we cut short its working in us and through us upon our return to our several Conferences?

We have seen the Spirit’s organization of the early Church. When He vivifies, and works through, the remnant Church, will He operate like some great machine, and His work come forth picked, assorted, packed, a product “cut-and-dried”?

Shall we follow parliamentary rules? Brethren, we may as well face it first as last; it is the old yet eternal question of righteousness, of salvation, by faith.

Are we saved by the law, or by the gospel instead? And yet the gospel is but the demonstration of the law fulfilled, worked out in human life by the power of God.

Is it the outward form that saves,—the letter, the flesh,—or is it the Life, the Spirit, that makes our lives an eternal success? And yet, indeed, the Spirit follows, fulfills the letter, preserves the form, and purifies the flesh. Let righteousness come by faith, and its works accord with, include, and go infinitely beyond all that is “holy, just, and good” in law, parliamentary usage, and every other form that does not take in all the substance of infinite justice, truth, and right.

In all things, brethren, first let the Spirit work His work and bear His fruit. The perfect unity, the wondrous power of giving witness, even the “all things common,” were results, the fruits, and not the causes.

From this time forth let the Spirit live His life in us; let God’s new creation rise in the heart and life of every man, and therefore in all the Church, according to His own plan of organization and upbuilding; “and as many as walk according to this rule, peace be on them, and mercy, and upon the Israel of God.”