Faithful Giving and Christian Readiness
By James White
Dear Bro. White: Enclosed please find draft of ten dollars, it being the amount for my share in the "Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association." I am very happy now to be able to send it in; for I judge the Association must stand in need of all their due as fast as it possibly can be paid in. I do not say this because I have been enabled to send mine in; but this is my feeling in the matter. The Lord has highly blessed me with health of body and success in business, which has enabled me to send in sooner than I thought would be possible for me when I took the share. Surely the "gold and silver are his, and the cattle upon a thousand hills." Why then should we, poor mortal creatures, dictate and plead inability to promise and pay in our tithes and offerings into the storehouse that there may be meat in the Lord's house. "Prove me herewith," saith the Lord. That is, try and see if it is not so; see if I will not pour you out a blessing that there shall not be room enough to receive it. Mal. iii, 8–12. The refreshing from the presence of the Lord is near at hand. The loud cry of the third angel's message is upon us. How many are going to be able to receive it? Only those dear brethren or sisters who plead earnestly with God, and are striving with all their might to overcome every sin. Such are the ones that will come off victorious. But the careless and indifferent will fall out by the way, and be lost sight of. I am astonished at myself often, that, knowing these things, I suffer myself so easily to be overcome by the insinuations of Satan. O may the Lord give me and mine strength to overcome every sin, and finally come off victorious and stand with the 144,000 on mount Zion, singing the song of Moses and the Lamb. My whole sympathies are with this people as a body, and none at all with those self-righteous and fault-finding spirits which are manifest here and there. My prayer is that I may not be overtaken in this way. I would rather seek to be humble and in union with those whom I fully believe have the burden of this work laid upon them. I would have but a poor opinion indeed of that soldier who, while the army "fitly joined and compacted" were marching out to meet the foe and win the prize, should step out and begin his fault-finding, and to dictate the works and movement of the body, and begin his march by himself, aiming precisely at the same end and object however, as the army from which he separated. Think you not that any good government would reject such a person? Yes. The most that any loyal person could say in favor of that man would be that he might, I say might, be honest in his motives; but no one certainly could have confidence in his judgment. May the Lord help his people, and save them in these days of peril, and give us a humble spirit, to seek meekness and righteousness, that we may be hid in the day of the Lord's anger, is my prayer. Yours in hope of eternal life.
E. M. Davis.