Let us put a consistent life behind every sermonic message.
The pulpit must not become a lecture platform, a political forum, or a business counter.
A closed mind is like a corked bottle. Nothing can get in, and not much worth while is likely to come out.
Christianity is first promoted by the testimony of facts, but it is retained only by translation into experience.
We are not merely to cause men to change their way of thinking, but their way of living. Christianity revolutionizes conduct.
Any deadwood in the ministry or driftwood in our evangelistic ranks, excludes a living timber. God wants living, growing, developing, spiritual workmen.
Sensationalism in the minister's public work is an unconscious advertisement of his lack of the Holy Spirit. He is aware of a need of power not possessed, and so turns unfortunately to crutches, expedients, and substitutes.
We need a revival of study of the principles set forth in the spirit of prophecy. The supreme proof of the divine origin of these writings lies in their internal evidence, their spirit and reaction upon the character, not in outward or mechanical evidences in connection with their communication to the human agent. The devil can counterfeit the mechanics, but not the spirit. Let this gift to the church be exalted, but ever on its true basis.
The dimming of the advent hope in the breast of a last-day herald of that hope, is the tragedy passing human expression. We need to pray for a growing consciousness of its imminent reality.
Let us beware of actually though not openly making tests of church fellowship those specific points eliminated by the clear declarations of the spirit of prophecy. No man is authorized nor qualified to make such a requirement of any soul.
The old-covenant attempt at obedience to the law of God is one of the devil's tricks foisted upon many conscientious souls. The new covenant confirms the law, but makes obedience possible through enabling grace. Eschew the old and stress the new.
The substitution of orthodoxy for a living relationship with Christ is one of the most subtle perils of the remnant church. Sound doctrine and Christian experience are companions, not antagonists. The danger is that the one may become a substitute for the other.
The worker who " flies off the handle," whose face flushes with anger when crossed, who sputters and says things in a moment of passion, has lost his influence irreparably in the church and with his ministering brethren, unless he is man enough to repent, confess, and repudiate it, just as every other common sinner is expected to do. Let him not think such conduct can be passed by because he is a preacher. It will not be overlooked by God.
How do the people in the pew regard us? Do they think of us as hard drivers, as money extractors, cold officials, argumentative doctrinarians, or as tender shepherds, men of power in word and prayer, Spirit-filled men of God?
Our tendency today is to depend too much on institutionalism and the machinery of organization, and too little upon direct, individual appeal. We need a revival of universal personal work. No minister can be an effective soul winner who neglects personal work.
To offer a Christ known only theoretically, whose healing has not been personally felt, whose commands are not the love law of the life, whose presence is not a living reality, and with whom constant communion is but an intellectual concept, is the most cruel imposition that can be foisted upon a sin-touched, longing congregation.
Let us refrain from slighting remarks against preaching, in order to give emphasis to service. Let us not join the Greeks in implying it is foolishness. The command of the Master, the example of the apostles, the experience of the pioneers, and the very text of the threefold message exalt preaching. Let us not seek to exalt one phase of this message by weakening confidence in another.
