No Reason for Disloyalty

Our loyalty to God.

DUANE R. PETERSON, Pastor, Illinois

While taking the church school group on a specially arranged field trip to a minimum-security penal farm in Vandalis, Illinois, I noticed some thought-provoking posters for the employees. The messages were very apt, and they can be applied beneficially to the ministry.

Loyalty

If you work for a man, in Heaven's name work for him.

If he pays you wages that supply your bread and butter, work for him, speak well of him, and stand by him, and stand by the institutions he represents.

If put to a pinch, an ounce of loyalty is worth a pound of cleverness. If you must vilify, condemn, or eternally disparage, resign your position.

But as long as you are a part of the institution, do not condemn it. If you do, you are loosening the tendrils that hold you to the institution, and by the first high wind that comes along, you will be uprooted and blown away; and probably you will never know why.

Our loyalty to God, His cause, His church, and His leadership should be such as will remain firm and undaunted. To stand resolutely in absolute loyalty to the remnant church is the pillarlike position every pastor must take. With harassment of insidious insinuations and innuendoes from within and without, the church will not get better, but only worse, as time con­tinues. God's sentinels must remain stal­wart in their loyalty.

Hear the voice of God: "My son, if sinners en­tice thee, consent thou not." Those who are con­trolled by the Spirit of God are to keep their per­ceptive faculties awake; for the time has come when their integrity and loyalty to God and to one an­other will be tested. Do not commit the least in­justice in order to gain an advantage for your­selves. Do unto others, in small matters as well as in great, as you would that others should do unto you. God says, "Ye are my witnesses." You are to act in My place.—Sons and Daughters of God, p. 164.

Where do God's men receive greater por­tions of the attribute of loyalty?

All who will gather warmth from the coldness of others, courage from their defections, and loy­alty from their treason, will triumph with the third angel's message.—Ibid., p. 201.

God and His church have been so very good to us. First of all, we have been chosen to be His full-time servants, and then generously supplied with the needs of life so that we can give our complete atten­tion and time to the work He has called us to do. Our hearts should be overflowing with gratitude. Let us stand faithful and true to all that God, His church, His lead­ership, stands for.

DUANE R. PETERSON, Pastor, Illinois

April 1965

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