AN OLD preacher once said, "If man has a soul, and he has; and if that soul can be won or lost for eternity, and it can; then the most important thing in the world is to bring a man to Jesus Christ."
This is our task! This is the reason for our being here. This is why God called us to be Seventh-day Adventist Christians.
Before we can carry out our "task" we must come to Jesus Christ ourselves. We must know what Paul knew when he said, "I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord" (Rom. 7:25). We must experience Romans 8:1 and have the assurance that Christ has accepted us and we now live in Him (Gal. 2:20). Only then can we carry out our task.
When we know Jesus Christ as our Saviour then there comes into our hearts a passion for souls. Our hearts begin to ache when we see people without a knowledge of Jesus Christ and we desire to bring them the love of Jesus. This was Moses' experience. It was this passion for souls that made him feel that he would rather be destroyed himself than see His people rejected by God.
We are all familiar with the story of Jesus' work on this earth. How He prayed, healed, performed miracles, and preached to the sin-laden people of His day. He did not do this work because He had to; He did this work because He loved the people— sinful people. He had a passion for souls that made Him spend long nights in prayer, that made Him untiring in His service for them. Only when we read Matthew- 23:37 and feel the heart-rending cry of the Master will we know the passion that our Master had for lost humanity.
We only have to think of people such as Knox, who wanted Scotland or death; Wesley, who said, "The world is my parish"; Lady Donnithrone, who gave up a life of luxury for the slums of Hong Kong; Jim Elliot, who with others stained the sand of a little river in Equador with his blood to bring the gospel to the Auca Indians; and Paul Carlson, who went to the Congo and died by a rebel bullet because he loved the Master, to see what it means to have a passion for souls.
No Seventh-day Adventist can carry out the "task" until his church work becomes a passion—not until the cross becomes a reality in his life.
We talk about a "finished task," and it will be finished, but a shot-in-the arm emotional needle will not sustain this feeling of a finished work throughout our lives. It will take a strong doctrinal belief. When Paul said, "Woe is unto me, if I preach not the gospel [of Jesus Christ]!" he was not thinking of his position or salary or his promotion. He was thinking of his firm be lief in the fact that "we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ" (2 Cor. 5:10). He was thinking of a man without Christ standing before a holy God. He thought of how hopeless it would be for any man to stand before this bar without the righteousness of Jesus Christ covering his life, and it was this that made him say, "Woe is unto me if I preach not the gospel [of Jesus Christ]!" It was this passion that made him go out to the far corners of the then-known world to finish his task.
The members of the Seventh-day Adventist Church need to see God "high and lifted up" (Isa. 6:1). Angels cover their faces and cry out "Holy, holy, holy," when in His presence. Only when God becomes sovereign in our thinking will God's people get this feeling of reverence for Him. But just as surely as "God becomes God" there will also come a conviction that "it is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God" (Heb. 10:31). It is when this conviction comes that the church will arise to finish the task!
Our task is before us today. Our task is overwhelming! Yet the Saviour assures us that if we will finish our task, He will finish sin.
