The 1930 Ministerial Reading Course books reached Africa, where I was laboring at the time, just before the beginning of the year, and I had the privilege of reading the two larger volumes on my trip into the interior. As I read these interesting books, I could but feel that it is a great pity that all our ministers and Bible workers do not follow these especially selected courses of reading.
In the choosing of books from year to year, the Ministerial Association and the General Conference Committee endeavor to select the rarest gems that are obtainable, and no one can follow the Ministerial Reading Course without receiving great personal benefit therefrom.
Surely our evangelical workers must spend considerable time reading properly selected books if they expect to grow in efficiency and keep abreast of the times. The messages presented today must be clothed in a different setting from those of yesterday, and tomorrow other changes will become necessary. This is not because the truth is changing, but because the error that we must meet is constantly assuming new forms, and the signs of the times are continuing to unfold in rapid panorama before our eyes. For a minister to rest content with knowledge gained in the past, to the extent that he does not sense the need of constant study for improvement in his ministry, is to court certain failure. We cannot allow our minds to go to sleep and still be capable of arresting the attention of a pleasure-bent world with messages clothed in the spirit and power of Elijah.
Some of the greatest and most subtle apostasies of all time are now being encountered by the Christian world. The very foundations of Christianity are being swept away by the mighty wave of Modernistic teaching which is engulfing Christendom. New forms of error are appearing almost daily. To meet these issues requires highly trained and well-informed minds, as well as consecrated lives. When a minister ceases to improve by the attainment of advancing knowledge, he has crossed the dead line, and is rapidly approaching the superannuation list. God cannot use men in the ministry whose minds have become dormant.
Years ago the Lord sent to the ministry of this church the following pertinent message: "Men of God must be diligent in study, earnest in the acquirement of knowledge, never wasting an hour. Through persevering exertion they may rise to almost any degree of eminence as Christians, as men of power and influence. . . . Ministers should devote time to reading, to study, to meditation and prayer. They should store the mind with useful knowledge.
. . . Take a book with you to read when traveling on the cars or waiting in the railway station. . . . Everyone should feel that there rests upon him an obligation to reach the height of intellectual greatness."—"Gospel Workers," pp. 278, 279.
There is great danger of becoming slothful in the Lord's business. But let us ever remember that "God has no use for lazy men in His cause."--Id., p. 277. Let our watchword ever be, "Constant Development!" No opportunity for self-improvement for the success of our ministry should be passed by unimproved. We have entered upon the final struggle between truth and error, and we shall require the best possible preparation in order to measure up to God's standard for us in this critical hour. Let us read the best in books, and thus improve our ministry.
