OUR WITNESSES | AdventAI

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Mountain View, California · Dec 20, 1905

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 31, No. 51.

OUR WITNESSES.

GOD'S works are His witnesses; so are ours our witnesses. His works witness to His righteousness, His love, His wisdom, His power. To what do ours bear witness? As His works are witnesses of what He does and is, so are ours witnesses of what we do and are. That witness can not be impeached. Our deeds are telling in unmistakable language the condition of the heart that prompts the hand to do them.

If our hearts are in the work of God, then are our hands busy with deeds that prove it so. If we are half-hearted in that work, that word is written indelibly on every piece of work that passes through our hands, and on every act that goes to make up our daily life. It is not left to the angels to write it there—the hands that do the work are doing the writing. The professions we make count for nothing when the works we do are clamoring to be heard against us, and are contradicting our professions to the face. We must be what we want men to think us, or we are asking them to believe a lie.

It is time wasted to profess what our works do not substantiate. They are the only witnesses that are qualified to testify for us, either before men or in the court of last resort. If they witness against us, our professions are empty air. Let us so act that our professions will be in harmony with our deeds. Let us seek to be what we would have God count us as being, and then the deeds that flow from our hands will be a constant well-spring of praise to our Creator, and God will crown our lives with the crown of victory. We can not impeach the testimony of our works either here or hereafter.

This is not teaching salvation by virtue of our own works. That is not the purpose of the argument. When Christ was asked, "What shall we do, that we might work the works of God?" He replied, "This is the work of God, that ye believe on Him whom He hath sent." John 6:28, 29. That is the essential of salvation; and from the life which is actuated by that belief will flow a constant stream of deeds testifying to men and to angels of our belief in that great fact. We can not earn or purchase salvation by the works that we may do; but our deeds can and do bear witness to our belief in, and acceptance of, the only way of salvation open to men. Open your heart to Him; believe on Him; and then your life and deeds will testify that you are His; that His work is your work; and the interests of His kingdom the motive of your life.

In such witnessing as that there is power for good. The world will see it, and be moved by it. Such lives are God's most powerful evangelists.

Now, when God's last warning message is going to the world, what a responsibility rests upon us so to live that the work we attempt to do for Him will not be marred by an inconsistent life. Let consecration to Him be our aim; the mind of Christ within us, let that be an accomplished fact; and then let us go into the vineyard, living and laboring for souls. Often we hear the words, "The harvest is white." Now, while we recognize the whiteness, the ripeness, of the harvest, let us not be idle spectators. God's purpose in bringing us to see the condition of the harvest is not accomplished unless we step in among the reapers to do our part. Mere belief is not enough. The devil can see the condition of the harvest better than many of us. God does not recognize the worth of any belief that does not result in fruitful labor for the cause of Christ, or does not attempt anything for Him. Christ became a servant; His children are to be servants. There will be no pampered pets in His household, no drones who see and do not.

Let the soul who would be a child of God so work and so live each day that his words and his deeds will bear constant witness that he is indeed a child of God. Then others will be glad for his having lived, and Christ will confess him before His Father and before His angels.