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Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Mar 19, 1901

FromReview and Herald, Vol. 78, No. 12.

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ORGANIZATION

By Earnest A. Raymond

The Remnant Church

EARNEST A. RAYMOND
How stands to-day the remnant Church? Is it ready for presentation to its Lord, “a glorious Church, not having spot, or wrinkle, or any such thing”? Is it ready for the ripening of the harvest by the latter rain—that finishing sealing work of the Spirit, that “cuts short in righteousness”?
Life’s growing-time will soon be over; its changing-time will soon be past: sealed and fixed for all eternity, the harvest of character will be gathered in. It will then be too late to organize anew, to change our tares to wheat, if we idle away the hours of NOW, the day of salvation. “The harvest is past, the summer is ended, and we are not saved!”
Brethren, is there not danger of our delaying the working out of our own salvation while waiting for the Spirit to do some wonderful work for us? Already we have Him with and in each one of us. “Know ye not your own selves, how that Jesus Christ is in you, except ye be reprobates?” “Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling. For it is God which worketh in you both to will and to do of His good pleasure.”
Have we willed to do His will? Desiring is not sufficient. “If any man will do His will, he shall know of the doctrine.” He shall quickly learn the what and the how. “Thy word is a lamp unto my feet, and a light unto my path.” Having willed to find and do the work of God, and found it, let us do it. “Therefore to him that knoweth to do good, and doeth it not, to him it is sin.”
How do it?—Even as the man whose withered arm and hand the Saviour healed. Precisely as the man whose feet and ankle bones received strength upon the exercise of faith. Neither was healed before he made the effort. At the very instant, in making the effort, they were healed. Such is the faith that works, and by working receives new power with which to work, increasing, growing, until it is ready for the last great trial and the fullness of the Spirit’s power.
At no time in the history of man has it been of more vital importance than now, that we walk in the light while we have the light, lest darkness come upon us. Do we strive to keep in line with every ray of light that falls? As a people have we not been looking for light, for divine direction,to come through certain channels and no other, and thus, having many a time heard and rejected, or hesitated and delayed, even when the message came that we had so long expected, found ourselves well-nigh powerless to act. Light is light, truth is truth, be it revealed through a Hottentot, a Grecian sage, a prophet appointed, or directly by an angel from heaven.
How is it, brethren, when the truth is made known without fear or favor; when the watchman on Zion’s walls cries aloud and spares not, showing God’s “people their transgression, and the house of Jacob their sins,” do we thank God, and feel renewed courage? or do we say, as did Ahab of old on meeting Elijah, “Art thou he that troubleth Israel?” God forbid. To such the prophet’s answer may well be given: “I have not troubled Israel; but thou, and thy father’s house, in that ye have forsaken the commandments of the Lord.”
The Spirit of God is the great agent of creation and reorganization. He hath tempered the body together, “that there should be no schism,” and “that the members should have the same care one for another.” What has been our work as the “repairer of the breach,” as the “restorer of paths to dwell in”? Have we obeyed the Spirit’s admonition to “lift up the hands which hang down, and the feeble knees; and make straight paths for your feet, lest that which is lame be turned out of the way, but rather let it be healed”? Have we not rather “thrust with side and with shoulder, and pushed all the diseased” with our horns, till we have “scattered them abroad”?
Is such the reorganization of heaven? The divine plan of redemption takes man where it finds him, and infuses into his being new life from above. Has the divine or the human plan been demonstrated by our haste to herald far and wide our educational means as something reorganized after God’s own mind and plan, from the mere outward sign of the Spirit’s expression affixed? Could any bondage be more galling than the obligation we have thus brought upon ourselves? Having first assumed the sign, the seal, the “coat of arms,” as it were, we now must “keep up appearances.” Is it any wonder that bankruptcy of heart and hand continually confronts us? Nature’s growth is “first the blade, then the ear, after that the full corn in the ear.” “Except the Lord build the house, they labor in vain that build it.”
True indeed it is that our foundation and building stones must be of eternal truth. The Word is the only true foundation and perfect guide, as the Spirit rears our life from earth to heaven. The Bible is the touchstone by which to test all that ever has been, is, or shall be thought, or said, or written, or done. But who of us have reached the depth and circumference of all God’s great “expressions,” that we can judge our fellow men by our own conceptions, a rule infallible? It were much better to study pagan philosophy in the light of the gospel, revealing something to be avoided, life’s record of humanity’s weakness by no means outgrown, than to fall into the essential errors of papal assumption.
Says the perfect Restorer, “If a man [or institution] be overtaken in a fault, ye which are spiritual, restore such an one in the spirit of meekness; considering thyself, lest thou also be tempted.” The Spirit of God is the only perfect unifier. By His operation the various members and gifts and operations of the whole “body” are knit together. What have we done in seeking to repair the breach with untempered mortar? Though we build with stones of present truth, without love’s perfect joining—the spirit of co-operation—the rent only widens.
Brethren beloved, have we ceased forever to quench the Spirit? Have we given up the belittling, hindering, and preventing of His work, although He is pleased to operate through human agents whom we have decided are not in harmony with our régime? If we truly have, we shall no more publish it abroad by way of contrast, as an indication of our superior righteousness, when the Spirit deigns in mercy and love to work with us in spite of our errors.
The time has indeed come when “repentance and remission of sins should be preached,” beginning at Jerusalem. Brother, whoever, wherever, you are, whatever others may do, let you and me make thorough preparation for the kingdom. Can we ever enter in, can we drink of the wondrous blessing of the Spirit’s fullness, with “fruits meet for repentance” not brought forth?
“Therefore if thou bring thy gift to the altar, and there rememberest that thy brother hath aught against thee; leave there thy gift before the altar, and go thy way; first be reconciled to thy brother, and then come and offer thy gift.”
My weary, way-worn brother, our Father loves us still. If our lives were not worth correcting; if our characters were not worth the polishing, He would not trouble to reprove us. That He calls attention to our faults while yet there is remedy, is the surest proof of enduring affection, and the strongest ground for hope. If there is anything for which we as Christians should never cease to pray in faith, it is breadth of mind. Note carefully this lesson from our Saviour’s life: “And John answered and said, Master, we saw one casting out devils in thy name; and we forbade him, because he followeth not with us. And Jesus said unto him, Forbid him not: for he that is not against us is for us.”
The same important truth is most forcibly brought out by Paul: “For the body is not one member, but many. If the foot shall say, Because I am not the hand, I am not of the body; is it therefore not of the body? And if the ear shall say, Because I am not the eye, I am not of the body; is it therefore not of the body? If the whole body were an eye, where were the hearing? If the whole were hearing, where were the smelling? . . . And the eye can not say unto the hand, I have no need of thee: nor again the head to the feet, I have no need of you.” “But now hath God set the members every one of them in the body, as it hath pleased Him.”
My brother, whoever, wherever, you are, shall you and I ever again be found warring against the divine order of organization? “Having then gifts differing,” “who art thou that judgest another man’s servant?” Though by common consent his special gift and training is indicated by A. B., or some other letters, instead of M. D., “what is that to thee? follow thou me.”
“If any man have not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of His.” Then never again let us present such a “spectacle unto the world, and to angels, and to men,” as the holding up to public disparagement, belittlement, and ridicule, those whose “proper gifts” differ from our own, but who are “following” as truly as we, though not, indeed, with us.
Brethren, what mean these burdened ones in almost every church and community, repressed, held down, consigned by us to eternal oblivion, though yearning from the depths of their souls for the co-operation of their brethren in laboring for the common Master? Are we guiltless? Are we really half as anxious that the mold of the divine mind and plan be received, as our own?
Brethren of the laity, let us not lay all the blame at the feet of our brethren in the ministry. Oftentimes it has been on account of our dereliction of duty that, seeing the ark of God tottering, they have unwisely put forth the hand. Or may it not be that, as with Moses of old, the Lord was wroth with them and dealt hardly for our sakes?
Fellow heirs of the kingdom, what we must have, what we shall have, is divine reorganization, creation anew, the being “born,” as was the world when brought forth to perfection, “of water and of the Spirit.” Every power, every faculty, the very elements of our being, surrendered to Him who recreates; comprehended, held in solution, as it were, of His wondrous power and grace,—it is thus and then His hovering, brooding Spirit does life’s rearranging work, and that holy thing brought forth shall, as then, when Adam was, and Christ the Lord, be called, and truly be, the son of God.