Testimonies for the Church Volume 1 - A New You Ministry

only ones who can help you. If you proceed in the way you have started, misery andwoe are before you. God’s hand will arrest you in a manner that will not suit you.His wrath will not slumber. But now He invites you. Now, just now, He calls uponyou to return unto Him without delay, and He will graciously pardon and heal all yourbackslidings. God is leading out a people who are peculiar. He will cleanse and purifythem, and fit them for translation. Every carnal thing will be separated from God’speculiar treasures until they shall be like gold seven times purified.I saw that it was a cruel position for Brethren A and B to be in, to be servingthe purposes of Satan by suffering their minds to run just as he would lead them inthe channel of unbelief. Their greatest sin was in talking out these dark doubts, thismidnight unbelief, and drawing other minds into the same dark channel.God’s people will be sifted, even as corn is sifted in a sieve, until all the chaffis separated from the pure kernels of grain. We are to look to Christ for an exampleand imitate the humble pattern. You do not feel reconciled to the discipline you needand do not exercise and practice that self-denial which Christ requires of those whoare truly heirs of salvation. Those who are engaged in the work of saving souls areco-workers with Christ. His was a work of disinterested benevolence, of constantself-sacrifice. Those who have had so great a sacrifice made for them that they mightbecome partakers of His heavenly grace should in their turn sacrifice and deny self toaid in the great work of bringing others to the knowledge of the truth. Self-interestshould be laid aside; selfish desires and self-comfort should not now stand in the wayof God’s work in saving souls. God’s ministers are laboring in Christ’s stead; theyare His ambassadors. They are not to study their ease, comfort, pleasure, desires, orconvenience. They must suffer for Christ, be crucified with Him, and431