The Week of Sacrifice and the Week of Prayer offerings are to be combined again into one offering this year. Sabbath, November 24, has been set apart as the day when the gifts of our people shall be received.
This offering takes on unusual significance and importance as more and more facts filter through regarding the suffering of our people in other lands. Many have been called upon to sacrifice all they have, and to suffer much for Christ under the iron heel of oppression in widely extended areas.
Surely, all these things come to our hearts with a mighty appeal to join together in the true spirit Of sacrifice at this time. We urge our ministers and other church leaders to faithfully present the needs of the world field before our people, that they may have ample time before the date set for the offering to plan for larger generosity this year than ever before.
Everyone should be encouraged to have as large a part in the coming sacrifice offering as the Lord impresses his heart. In this land of prosperity and peace we should carefully and faithfully measure r responsibility to God and to our fellow believers who are facing stark realities of the present suits of war.
All should be reminded to join in giving a week's salary, if possible. Others who may not be able to do this will wish to make their offering on November 24 an unusually large one.
We are now entering the most wonderful epoch in all the history of the church. Nothing like it has ever been known. The nations will probably never again be so ready for the truth as now.
The missionary opportunity has increased many-fold in the past quarter of a century. Millions of people are accessible now who were not a short time ago. Never were there so many open doors and urgent calls for a great forward movement of universal proportions.
To meet this emergency and opportunity, our great need is a revival of such a practical sense of Christian stewardship of self and possessions as shall adequately provide men and ample means for the utmost prosecution of a finishing work in the earth.
Many do not realize their position before God as stewards. Many are living as if they were owners instead of trustees. As ministers, we must bring to our people everywhere a realization and development of the sense of stewardship as essential to human salvation. The true Christian life is found where this recognition, this sense of stewardship, is found, and true Christianity is absent when this sense is absent.
There never was a time when God's cause needed more the results of faithfulness on the part of the church than now. The recent hearty response of our dear workers and people to the call for funds for construction reveals without any doubt whatever that God's remnant church is settling down to a new determination to sound the message quickly to the ends of the earth, meeting with fearless courage and faith every necessary sacrifice in reaching that great objective. How important it is now to finish the work in all the earth while men's minds are still plastic.
Let us all unite for a greater Week of Sacrifice Offering on Sabbath, November 24. The times demand it ; our vows to God impel us. The vast open doors before us everywhere call for a mighty advance to earth's uttermost frontiers. May every leader now be found faithful to his trust and, in the Spirit of Christ, rally our people for this greater offering.
