For I say unto you, That none of those men which were bidden shall taste of my supper.
Those first invited to the great supper all refused with one consent on the plea of lands, oxen and marriage, and the master in anger shut them out forever so that not one of them would ever taste his feast. Their excuses were not real necessities but frivolous insults to a condescending host, showing that they could not come because they would not come and did not care to come. The supper is God's gracious gospel invitation to mercy and eternal life, prepared at the cost of Christ's life-blood to meet every spiritual need and now ready for all who will accept. That exclusion first fell on the impenitent Jewish nation and its priests, elders and Pharisees who professed to await the Messiah yet rejected Him, and it means as much to everyone since blessed with the light of truth whose property, business, home interests and money-getting are made the excuse for refusal. The house will still be filled by the second call to the streets and lanes and highways and hedges, to the poor, maimed, halt and blind and despised Gentiles, so an urgent final invitation must go everywhere without distinction and be heeded without delay lest probation close and seeking entrance afterward be too late.
Parable Setting and Wording
The saying closes the parable of the great supper, spoken while a guest at a feast as a lesson fitted to the needs of the hearers. It was aimed to expose a Pharisee who tried to turn talk away from present practical duty to future blessedness in the kingdom of God. Sharing in that future blessedness requires acting now in service and not slighting present privilege.
Those first bidden with one consent made excuse, one having bought ground, another five yoke of oxen, another having married a wife. Ordinary concerns of property, work, farms, cattle, marriage and home interests kept them away. Business and merchandise and worldly pleasures and plans for enjoyment overpowered every divine attraction. The focus of the message is those excuses made for refusing the invitation to the marriage supper of the Lamb.
Their refusal was not a flat refusal but an insult to a host for whom it was a great condescension to give the gracious invitation. They let other things take their attention and asked to be excused with frivolous excuses. Those excuses were trivial and not real necessities, for purchases and plans mattered more to them than the feast. Their absorbed attention to earthly interests concealed the truth that their claim they could not come meant they would not come and did not care to come.
Their refusal made the master of the house angry, so he decreed they should be shut out and not share in it. He then commanded his servant to go into the streets and lanes of the city and into the highways and hedges to fill his house. Compel them to come in means drawing them by clearly presenting the truth, not using force, with persevering determined effort and earnest labor. The supper is a banquet of truth prepared at the cost of precious life, and the compassionate Redeemer commands His servants to call both rich and poor to it, taking hold of worldly moneyed men to bring them to the table where He Himself will serve them.
Finality of the Exclusion
None of those first invited who turned away with excuses will ever taste the supper, for refusal leaves them shut out with no share in the feast. The loss is total, embracing spiritual and temporal blessings as well as heavenly benefits, so that despising the gracious invitation forfeits heaven and eternal life itself. Those who reject what was offered for their good choose lesser interests instead, and their excuses leave them outside while others are brought in to fill the house. The invitation is urgent because all things are now ready, yet those who have heard the call for years and still will not come have no part in it, and messengers are then sent to all classes in the highways and hedges who have not heard. What was promised as reward cannot be claimed by those who refused to enter the kingdom on the terms offered.
The first class honored with the invitation lost their place forever by refusal and will not be invited again. When the invitation of mercy has been refused there will be no second invitation, for the call to supper reaches to the close of probation. After probation closes those who received the warning and the offer of pardon and salvation but rejected them, turning from truth to fables, will have no further opportunity to be justified or to answer another call. The feast will still be abundantly furnished with guests gathered by the second invitation from the streets and lanes and highways and hedges, the poor and needy.
Seeking admission after the door is closed will be too late, and unreadiness that settles for lesser interests brings lasting loss and can draw others into remaining unready. Every refusal to listen to the message of mercy strengthens unbelief, every failure to open the heart makes a person more unwilling to listen, and diminishes the chance of responding to the last appeal of mercy. Closing the eyes against evidence prepares the way for continued opposition, with the first step of rejection making the second easier until hatred for the principles of Christ's character follows. In rejecting Christ men harden their hearts and give themselves into the power of Satan until it becomes impossible to accept His grace, for the Lord has given no greater manifestation of His love, and if the love of Jesus does not subdue and soften the soul into an abiding principle no other means can reach it and the person is utterly lost.
As with the Passover, refusal to gather in safety under appointed protection brings judgment even when excuses are offered. Children who rejected their parents' pleas to gather would not be spared the death of the firstborn. As on Passover night the Hebrews had to be inside the house with blood on the lintels and doorposts with staffs in hand in full obedience, so excuse-makers who treat God's warning as a whim and refuse entreaties to gather in obedience are left exposed and shut out from the feast. The stroke of judgment in that night would fall as surely on the firstborn of a careless Hebrew family as on the Egyptians.
Those First Bidden Identified
The exclusion foretold the doom of the impenitent Jewish nation that scornfully refused the gospel feast with contempt, resisted mercy and persecuted its messengers. Jerusalem's destruction by the Romans followed that rejection, and the call of mercy then went to others including the poor and disabled and the Gentiles whom the Jewish leaders despised. Those first bidden who are shut out from presence and table are the priests, elders and leading Pharisees, men of great professions of piety who claimed to look eagerly for the promised Messiah and expected to go in immediately when called. They proclaimed everywhere that the King of the Jews would come, conquer their enemies and set up His kingdom, yet applied to His first advent the prophecies relating to His second coming, so when He came they did not know Him. While claiming to obey God's holy, just and good law they rendered only a false obedience, making it impossible for anyone to keep by exacting requirements while constantly disobeying it themselves, and while publicans and sinners who accepted His words could be saved, they who boasted of piety but rejected Him would be cast out.
The same refusal is repeated by religious teachers who follow in the steps of the Jewish rulers. They will not see their peril and are unwilling to make a candid investigation of the Scriptures, and closing their eyes against evidence prepares continued opposition until hatred for the principles of Christ's character appears.
The verse means very much to everyone blessed with the light of truth and invited to partake of the provisions of grace through God's Son, for the warning given to the Jewish nation applies to every nation when light comes and all things are ready. It tests especially those best able to advance the cause and moneyed men, watching whether selfish interests will be counted of greater value than eternal riches. Many repeat the excuses of ground bought, five yoke of oxen, and marriage, letting farms, cattle, home interests, worldly possessions, business and cares overpower every divine attraction and disobey the command to come. The very blessings given to prove them are made the excuse for refusing the claims of truth, until the heart becomes unimpressible as the beaten highway and overgrown with thorns, closed to the heavenly messenger and open to the world. Those entrusted with great light who spend time and means serving themselves instead of helping the perishing will later recognize that the Lord had offered light and knowledge involving eternal interests but they refused to receive it, keeping the galling yoke of selfishness, covetousness and money-getting for selfish gratification instead of Christ's easy yoke and light burden of self-denial, sacrifice for others and disinterested benevolence, and so forfeit their place at the supper.
To refuse for ridicule, neighbors' opinions, worldly interests, or unwillingness to keep the Sabbath is to despise an invitation purchased by the Son of God's life and by infinite cost, and those who so refuse will not taste of the supper and its heavenly benefits and immortal inheritance. Some were convicted and considered accepting but fear of hatred from the scribes, Pharisees and Sadducees kept them from doing so, and neglecting the invitation to please a husband, relatives or children brings serious spiritual loss, for a spouse's refusal is no reason to refuse. Refusal is choosing earthly pleasures and sinful disobedience over obedience and choosing to live for self rather than God, and the self-righteous who so refuse are counted with unbelievers. Because they reject God's commandments and do not seek to know Him here, they are unfitted to serve Him or live in His presence in heaven and would prefer any place to heaven.
What the Supper Signifies
The supper is God's gracious invitation to the gospel feast, a feast of mercy and of kingdom blessings now made ready with all things ready. It is a type of eternal life and of the heavenly benefits and immortal inheritance opened through sacrifice, recalling the hope of sitting with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. Those first invited who let other concerns take priority and refuse with frivolous excuses are excluded and will not share in it, while the invitation passes to another class.
The supper is the marriage supper of the Lamb. Its call is the last call to the gospel feast, the last invitation to the marriage supper, which is the message of Christ's soon coming to be given to the world. Thousands of places that have not heard the call are yet to hear it, and many who have not given the message are yet to proclaim it, with young men called to sound it.
The banquet of truth was prepared at infinite cost, at the cost of Christ's precious life and life-blood. It is freely offered to all who will accept, to all finite fallen men needing pardon and peace that they may come and make peace with God. It meets every spiritual need with pardon and grace, Christ's righteousness, justification by faith, promises, access to the Father, the Spirit's comfort and assurance of eternal life, as bread of life for those in spiritual need. Each person bears individual responsibility to accept it, so that a spouse's refusal or pleasing husband, relatives or children is no reason to refuse, and to refuse or treat it with indifference is contempt for God and for one's highest good.
Merely accepting the privileges of the gospel supper is not enough. Each one must put on Christ's righteousness as the wedding garment, the spotless robe of supreme worth joining humanity with divinity, and strip off inherited and cultivated traits of character that dishonor God. Accepting the truth produces faith that works by love and purifies the soul, and like builders there must be counting of the cost with wholehearted service and faithful use of talents, since nominal acceptance without living the truth leaves one outside the feast. Those who come without the garment, though once bidden and once in high positions of trust, have not let sanctifying truth into the soul, and when questioned will be speechless, taken from His presence and separated from the loyal as unworthy to taste the supper after persisting in rejecting His pleadings and continuing in sin until reform became impossible and title to eternal life was forfeited.
Those Gathered In Instead
Though those first invited refused and will not taste, the feast will still be abundantly furnished with guests gathered by a second invitation from the streets and lanes of the city and the highways and hedges. That gathering brings in the poor and needy, the maimed and the halt and the blind, the disabled and others willing to come. It reaches people the Jewish leaders despised as of little value, even the Gentiles, to whom the call of mercy goes when the first bidden are shut out from presence and table. The invitation thus continues throughout a lifetime and into eternity, to be carried to all without restriction until the house is filled with others.
God's provision and call extend to all without exception or limitation, high and low, rich and poor, sinners of all degrees, old and young, from every social level. His banquet is provided for the whole human race and offered to all who will accept, though some reject it for earthly goods and worldly advantages. The call is not to be withheld from those sunk in degrading habits or feeling unworthy, but they are to be invited and lovingly urged to come, for their condition does not place them beyond reach. No territorial, social, or other human distinction limits who should be invited, whether nearby or farther away, especially those needing sympathy and help, and workers are to call people in the highways and byways to become guests. That saving work must advance into the hardest fields and regions beyond, including Africa. Those who accept the invitation to the marriage supper of the Lamb may be guests, while those who reject or make light of it are excluded.
Those who accept humbly receive Christ's righteousness as their wedding garment and are welcomed to the feast without price. Those who heed the call and accept come to the feast prepared for them.
In place of those who refuse to deny self, lift the cross and do the work they should have done, God will pass them by and take illiterate, obscure men and move upon them by His Spirit to carry out His purposes in saving souls. So the last message of mercy will be given to the world by a people who love and fear Him, not by supposed sages, pretentious buildings, or learned eloquence. Efficacious sowing and harvest does not depend on the apparently most eloquent, and the invitation, Come for all things are now ready, is to be given now in large cities such as New York, Utica, and Buffalo, where truth is to go forth as a lamp that burneth, including the lowest most debased class ripe for harvest.
Carrying and Heeding Invitation
The parable pictures the work of the last message to the world, for after the first guests refuse, an urgent final call goes out to bring others in so that the house may be filled. That present call is urgent and must be proclaimed with decided earnestness, joined to messages of warning and to the essential testing truths for the last days. Those first invited who refuse will not share in the supper, and people must now turn from iniquity and remain spiritually ready lest the day of the Lord overtake them.
The invitation to the banquet prepared at infinite cost must be carried everywhere into the highways and byways to reach people where they are, with no territorial, social, or human distinction limiting who is invited. It is to be given now in large cities and towns such as New York, Utica, and Buffalo, and in wicked centers such as San Francisco, as a lamp that burns, and it must go to thousands of places yet unreached. It belongs to those nearby and farther away, especially those needing sympathy and help, including people in darkness, in sin, standing idle in the marketplace, the lowest and most debased who are ripe for harvest, those terribly degraded, the formerly enslaved in the Southern field among both white and colored classes, and those in the hardest fields in Africa and regions beyond. Efficacious sowing and harvest does not depend on the apparently most eloquent, and heavenly intelligences wait to cooperate with human agents in this home missionary work and in missions to the dark parts of the earth.
Medical missionary work corresponds to that last invitation and gives the final call to the supper God has prepared, a work the church had neglected toward souls ready to perish. Sanitariums fulfill this commission as one means of carrying the third angel's message to all parts of the world to those who know it not, teaching a better way of living to those enslaved to intemperate habits that destroy soul and body. Under the influence of Bible truth many unbelievers are thus won to Christ as angels of God impress their hearts, with heavenly intelligences cooperating, and the Battle Creek work was carried forward through Doctor Kellogg when entrusted people failed.
The Lord has called delegated servants, watchmen, ministers, young men, home missionaries, and moneyed men of business capability to give the call without delay, for salvation for those invited is a life-and-death question. It is given from house to house with the Bible, by personal visits, prayer and tender labor, through sermons and Bible readings explaining the Scriptures, social meetings suited to every case, and camp meetings by which the Lord impresses hearts, convicts and converts even those who have not entered a church for twelve, fourteen, and sixteen years, and deeply stirs church members. Ministers must take hold of worldly moneyed men and bring them to the banquet to seat them at Christ's table where Christ Himself will serve them, seeking both the higher classes and the perishing with persevering, determined effort that compels them to come in. Those susceptible to the gospel will be moved by the Spirit to believe and obey the Scriptures, clear away obstructions, open doors, donate property to establish a center, and use entrusted means to prepare the way of the Lord and warn of His soon coming, and those who take up the work with earnestness, consecration, willingness and unselfishness will be greatly blessed. Good workers can be made for the vineyard without gathering in Battle Creek for more time and money spent on education at the expense of practical godliness, for talents are learned to be used by using them, and those who improve them where they are will be blessed with teachers sent from God.
The verse calls for heart work and reformation of character into close connection with God, making a deep impression upon minds. Business and merchandise, oxen bought, and marriage are trivial excuses that shut men out, and those who decide to follow the world and stay on the world's side place themselves where there is no compelling and lose heaven and the life that measures with the life of God. Neglecting God's invitation to share the message costs souls the opportunity He intended for them, leaves churches condemned, and causes the neglectful themselves to lose the blessings and salvation He desired to give. Slothful servants must not hide their talents nor by their influence keep others away, but must draw souls, and those already invited must respond rather than stand aside criticizing efforts to bring in sinners and outcasts even when few accept.
Those first invited to the great supper all refused with one consent on the plea of lands, oxen and marriage, and the master in anger shut them out forever so that not one of them would ever taste his feast. Their excuses were not real necessities but frivolous insults to a condescending host, showing that they could not come because they would not come and did not care to come. The supper is God's gracious gospel invitation to mercy and eternal life, prepared at the cost of Christ's life-blood to meet every spiritual need and now ready for all who will accept. That exclusion first fell on the impenitent Jewish nation and its priests, elders and Pharisees who professed to await the Messiah yet rejected Him, and it means as much to everyone since blessed with the light of truth whose property, business, home interests and money-getting are made the excuse for refusal. The house will still be filled by the second call to the streets and lanes and highways and hedges, to the poor, maimed, halt and blind and despised Gentiles, so an urgent final invitation must go everywhere without distinction and be heeded without delay lest probation close and seeking entrance afterward be too late.
Parable Setting and Wording
The saying closes the parable of the great supper, spoken while a guest at a feast as a lesson fitted to the needs of the hearers. It was aimed to expose a Pharisee who tried to turn talk away from present practical duty to future blessedness in the kingdom of God. Sharing in that future blessedness requires acting now in service and not slighting present privilege.
Those first bidden with one consent made excuse, one having bought ground, another five yoke of oxen, another having married a wife. Ordinary concerns of property, work, farms, cattle, marriage and home interests kept them away. Business and merchandise and worldly pleasures and plans for enjoyment overpowered every divine attraction. The focus of the message is those excuses made for refusing the invitation to the marriage supper of the Lamb.
Their refusal was not a flat refusal but an insult to a host for whom it was a great condescension to give the gracious invitation. They let other things take their attention and asked to be excused with frivolous excuses. Those excuses were trivial and not real necessities, for purchases and plans mattered more to them than the feast. Their absorbed attention to earthly interests concealed the truth that their claim they could not come meant they would not come and did not care to come.
Their refusal made the master of the house angry, so he decreed they should be shut out and not share in it. He then commanded his servant to go into the streets and lanes of the city and into the highways and hedges to fill his house. Compel them to come in means drawing them by clearly presenting the truth, not using force, with persevering determined effort and earnest labor. The supper is a banquet of truth prepared at the cost of precious life, and the compassionate Redeemer commands His servants to call both rich and poor to it, taking hold of worldly moneyed men to bring them to the table where He Himself will serve them.
Finality of the Exclusion
None of those first invited who turned away with excuses will ever taste the supper, for refusal leaves them shut out with no share in the feast. The loss is total, embracing spiritual and temporal blessings as well as heavenly benefits, so that despising the gracious invitation forfeits heaven and eternal life itself. Those who reject what was offered for their good choose lesser interests instead, and their excuses leave them outside while others are brought in to fill the house. The invitation is urgent because all things are now ready, yet those who have heard the call for years and still will not come have no part in it, and messengers are then sent to all classes in the highways and hedges who have not heard. What was promised as reward cannot be claimed by those who refused to enter the kingdom on the terms offered.
The first class honored with the invitation lost their place forever by refusal and will not be invited again. When the invitation of mercy has been refused there will be no second invitation, for the call to supper reaches to the close of probation. After probation closes those who received the warning and the offer of pardon and salvation but rejected them, turning from truth to fables, will have no further opportunity to be justified or to answer another call. The feast will still be abundantly furnished with guests gathered by the second invitation from the streets and lanes and highways and hedges, the poor and needy.
Seeking admission after the door is closed will be too late, and unreadiness that settles for lesser interests brings lasting loss and can draw others into remaining unready. Every refusal to listen to the message of mercy strengthens unbelief, every failure to open the heart makes a person more unwilling to listen, and diminishes the chance of responding to the last appeal of mercy. Closing the eyes against evidence prepares the way for continued opposition, with the first step of rejection making the second easier until hatred for the principles of Christ's character follows. In rejecting Christ men harden their hearts and give themselves into the power of Satan until it becomes impossible to accept His grace, for the Lord has given no greater manifestation of His love, and if the love of Jesus does not subdue and soften the soul into an abiding principle no other means can reach it and the person is utterly lost.
As with the Passover, refusal to gather in safety under appointed protection brings judgment even when excuses are offered. Children who rejected their parents' pleas to gather would not be spared the death of the firstborn. As on Passover night the Hebrews had to be inside the house with blood on the lintels and doorposts with staffs in hand in full obedience, so excuse-makers who treat God's warning as a whim and refuse entreaties to gather in obedience are left exposed and shut out from the feast. The stroke of judgment in that night would fall as surely on the firstborn of a careless Hebrew family as on the Egyptians.
Those First Bidden Identified
The exclusion foretold the doom of the impenitent Jewish nation that scornfully refused the gospel feast with contempt, resisted mercy and persecuted its messengers. Jerusalem's destruction by the Romans followed that rejection, and the call of mercy then went to others including the poor and disabled and the Gentiles whom the Jewish leaders despised. Those first bidden who are shut out from presence and table are the priests, elders and leading Pharisees, men of great professions of piety who claimed to look eagerly for the promised Messiah and expected to go in immediately when called. They proclaimed everywhere that the King of the Jews would come, conquer their enemies and set up His kingdom, yet applied to His first advent the prophecies relating to His second coming, so when He came they did not know Him. While claiming to obey God's holy, just and good law they rendered only a false obedience, making it impossible for anyone to keep by exacting requirements while constantly disobeying it themselves, and while publicans and sinners who accepted His words could be saved, they who boasted of piety but rejected Him would be cast out.
The same refusal is repeated by religious teachers who follow in the steps of the Jewish rulers. They will not see their peril and are unwilling to make a candid investigation of the Scriptures, and closing their eyes against evidence prepares continued opposition until hatred for the principles of Christ's character appears.
The verse means very much to everyone blessed with the light of truth and invited to partake of the provisions of grace through God's Son, for the warning given to the Jewish nation applies to every nation when light comes and all things are ready. It tests especially those best able to advance the cause and moneyed men, watching whether selfish interests will be counted of greater value than eternal riches. Many repeat the excuses of ground bought, five yoke of oxen, and marriage, letting farms, cattle, home interests, worldly possessions, business and cares overpower every divine attraction and disobey the command to come. The very blessings given to prove them are made the excuse for refusing the claims of truth, until the heart becomes unimpressible as the beaten highway and overgrown with thorns, closed to the heavenly messenger and open to the world. Those entrusted with great light who spend time and means serving themselves instead of helping the perishing will later recognize that the Lord had offered light and knowledge involving eternal interests but they refused to receive it, keeping the galling yoke of selfishness, covetousness and money-getting for selfish gratification instead of Christ's easy yoke and light burden of self-denial, sacrifice for others and disinterested benevolence, and so forfeit their place at the supper.
To refuse for ridicule, neighbors' opinions, worldly interests, or unwillingness to keep the Sabbath is to despise an invitation purchased by the Son of God's life and by infinite cost, and those who so refuse will not taste of the supper and its heavenly benefits and immortal inheritance. Some were convicted and considered accepting but fear of hatred from the scribes, Pharisees and Sadducees kept them from doing so, and neglecting the invitation to please a husband, relatives or children brings serious spiritual loss, for a spouse's refusal is no reason to refuse. Refusal is choosing earthly pleasures and sinful disobedience over obedience and choosing to live for self rather than God, and the self-righteous who so refuse are counted with unbelievers. Because they reject God's commandments and do not seek to know Him here, they are unfitted to serve Him or live in His presence in heaven and would prefer any place to heaven.
What the Supper Signifies
The supper is God's gracious invitation to the gospel feast, a feast of mercy and of kingdom blessings now made ready with all things ready. It is a type of eternal life and of the heavenly benefits and immortal inheritance opened through sacrifice, recalling the hope of sitting with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. Those first invited who let other concerns take priority and refuse with frivolous excuses are excluded and will not share in it, while the invitation passes to another class.
The supper is the marriage supper of the Lamb. Its call is the last call to the gospel feast, the last invitation to the marriage supper, which is the message of Christ's soon coming to be given to the world. Thousands of places that have not heard the call are yet to hear it, and many who have not given the message are yet to proclaim it, with young men called to sound it.
The banquet of truth was prepared at infinite cost, at the cost of Christ's precious life and life-blood. It is freely offered to all who will accept, to all finite fallen men needing pardon and peace that they may come and make peace with God. It meets every spiritual need with pardon and grace, Christ's righteousness, justification by faith, promises, access to the Father, the Spirit's comfort and assurance of eternal life, as bread of life for those in spiritual need. Each person bears individual responsibility to accept it, so that a spouse's refusal or pleasing husband, relatives or children is no reason to refuse, and to refuse or treat it with indifference is contempt for God and for one's highest good.
Merely accepting the privileges of the gospel supper is not enough. Each one must put on Christ's righteousness as the wedding garment, the spotless robe of supreme worth joining humanity with divinity, and strip off inherited and cultivated traits of character that dishonor God. Accepting the truth produces faith that works by love and purifies the soul, and like builders there must be counting of the cost with wholehearted service and faithful use of talents, since nominal acceptance without living the truth leaves one outside the feast. Those who come without the garment, though once bidden and once in high positions of trust, have not let sanctifying truth into the soul, and when questioned will be speechless, taken from His presence and separated from the loyal as unworthy to taste the supper after persisting in rejecting His pleadings and continuing in sin until reform became impossible and title to eternal life was forfeited.
Those Gathered In Instead
Though those first invited refused and will not taste, the feast will still be abundantly furnished with guests gathered by a second invitation from the streets and lanes of the city and the highways and hedges. That gathering brings in the poor and needy, the maimed and the halt and the blind, the disabled and others willing to come. It reaches people the Jewish leaders despised as of little value, even the Gentiles, to whom the call of mercy goes when the first bidden are shut out from presence and table. The invitation thus continues throughout a lifetime and into eternity, to be carried to all without restriction until the house is filled with others.
God's provision and call extend to all without exception or limitation, high and low, rich and poor, sinners of all degrees, old and young, from every social level. His banquet is provided for the whole human race and offered to all who will accept, though some reject it for earthly goods and worldly advantages. The call is not to be withheld from those sunk in degrading habits or feeling unworthy, but they are to be invited and lovingly urged to come, for their condition does not place them beyond reach. No territorial, social, or other human distinction limits who should be invited, whether nearby or farther away, especially those needing sympathy and help, and workers are to call people in the highways and byways to become guests. That saving work must advance into the hardest fields and regions beyond, including Africa. Those who accept the invitation to the marriage supper of the Lamb may be guests, while those who reject or make light of it are excluded.
Those who accept humbly receive Christ's righteousness as their wedding garment and are welcomed to the feast without price. Those who heed the call and accept come to the feast prepared for them.
In place of those who refuse to deny self, lift the cross and do the work they should have done, God will pass them by and take illiterate, obscure men and move upon them by His Spirit to carry out His purposes in saving souls. So the last message of mercy will be given to the world by a people who love and fear Him, not by supposed sages, pretentious buildings, or learned eloquence. Efficacious sowing and harvest does not depend on the apparently most eloquent, and the invitation, Come for all things are now ready, is to be given now in large cities such as New York, Utica, and Buffalo, where truth is to go forth as a lamp that burneth, including the lowest most debased class ripe for harvest.
Carrying and Heeding Invitation
The parable pictures the work of the last message to the world, for after the first guests refuse, an urgent final call goes out to bring others in so that the house may be filled. That present call is urgent and must be proclaimed with decided earnestness, joined to messages of warning and to the essential testing truths for the last days. Those first invited who refuse will not share in the supper, and people must now turn from iniquity and remain spiritually ready lest the day of the Lord overtake them.
The invitation to the banquet prepared at infinite cost must be carried everywhere into the highways and byways to reach people where they are, with no territorial, social, or human distinction limiting who is invited. It is to be given now in large cities and towns such as New York, Utica, and Buffalo, and in wicked centers such as San Francisco, as a lamp that burns, and it must go to thousands of places yet unreached. It belongs to those nearby and farther away, especially those needing sympathy and help, including people in darkness, in sin, standing idle in the marketplace, the lowest and most debased who are ripe for harvest, those terribly degraded, the formerly enslaved in the Southern field among both white and colored classes, and those in the hardest fields in Africa and regions beyond. Efficacious sowing and harvest does not depend on the apparently most eloquent, and heavenly intelligences wait to cooperate with human agents in this home missionary work and in missions to the dark parts of the earth.
Medical missionary work corresponds to that last invitation and gives the final call to the supper God has prepared, a work the church had neglected toward souls ready to perish. Sanitariums fulfill this commission as one means of carrying the third angel's message to all parts of the world to those who know it not, teaching a better way of living to those enslaved to intemperate habits that destroy soul and body. Under the influence of Bible truth many unbelievers are thus won to Christ as angels of God impress their hearts, with heavenly intelligences cooperating, and the Battle Creek work was carried forward through Doctor Kellogg when entrusted people failed.
The Lord has called delegated servants, watchmen, ministers, young men, home missionaries, and moneyed men of business capability to give the call without delay, for salvation for those invited is a life-and-death question. It is given from house to house with the Bible, by personal visits, prayer and tender labor, through sermons and Bible readings explaining the Scriptures, social meetings suited to every case, and camp meetings by which the Lord impresses hearts, convicts and converts even those who have not entered a church for twelve, fourteen, and sixteen years, and deeply stirs church members. Ministers must take hold of worldly moneyed men and bring them to the banquet to seat them at Christ's table where Christ Himself will serve them, seeking both the higher classes and the perishing with persevering, determined effort that compels them to come in. Those susceptible to the gospel will be moved by the Spirit to believe and obey the Scriptures, clear away obstructions, open doors, donate property to establish a center, and use entrusted means to prepare the way of the Lord and warn of His soon coming, and those who take up the work with earnestness, consecration, willingness and unselfishness will be greatly blessed. Good workers can be made for the vineyard without gathering in Battle Creek for more time and money spent on education at the expense of practical godliness, for talents are learned to be used by using them, and those who improve them where they are will be blessed with teachers sent from God.
The verse calls for heart work and reformation of character into close connection with God, making a deep impression upon minds. Business and merchandise, oxen bought, and marriage are trivial excuses that shut men out, and those who decide to follow the world and stay on the world's side place themselves where there is no compelling and lose heaven and the life that measures with the life of God. Neglecting God's invitation to share the message costs souls the opportunity He intended for them, leaves churches condemned, and causes the neglectful themselves to lose the blessings and salvation He desired to give. Slothful servants must not hide their talents nor by their influence keep others away, but must draw souls, and those already invited must respond rather than stand aside criticizing efforts to bring in sinners and outcasts even when few accept.