General Conference Bulletin, vol. 4

OUR OPPORTUNITY FOR SERVICE

H. E. OSBORNE

Reading for Friday, December 27.

Beyond a shadow of a doubt the Lord expected this people to become a medical missionary denomination. The dire necessities of the world about us constitute our special GCB October 1, 1901, page 581.11

opportunities. We have terribly failed in doing what we might have done toward beating back the great tide of misery that is threatening to engulf the world, for the “whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain together until now.” Romans 8:22. GCB October 1, 1901, page 581.12

We have had committed to us the knowledge as to what causes a large share of this pain. Providence has placed within our reach the appropriate remedies to relieve much of this distress; but thus far we have scarcely made ourselves felt in the world, because we have not been awake to our opportunities. We have compelled the Lord to move on others outside our people to encourage reforms for humanity in which we ought to have been the leaders. There are some reformatory movements that we have scarcely touched with the ends of our fingers. We are not simply in this world to give the people the correct theory of truth, but also actually to repeat the Master’s work when he walked among men, and went about doing good. We are to accomplish enough good so that we may add to the sum total of human happiness in the community where we live. We must get that spirit of helpfulness toward humanity which a mother feels toward her child, and then we shall be willing to help others, even if they are not as a result especially drawn toward the truth. GCB October 1, 1901, page 581.13

There were twenty-seven million cases of sickness in this country last year, many of them fatal. For how many of these deaths has God held us responsible? This is a question that we shall soon have to face at the bar of God. “To him that knoweth to do good and doeth it not, to him it is sin.” James 4:17. It is not difficult to become intelligent in regard to what caused the majority of these diseases, for most of them were due to such simple everyday things as errors in eating, drinking, dressing, and a disturbed state of mind. If we are really alive upon these questions, then some one in the community will catch our spirit of enthusiasm, and the Lord will put it into his heart to avoid these evils; and as a consequence there will be fewer funeral in each of our respective neighborhoods in the future than there have been in the past. It is not better to prevent a man from dying, than to have the power to raise the same man from the grave after he is dead? Yet, Dr. Gould, one of the leading physicians in America. Recently stated that fully one half the deaths that took place last year were wholly preventable. GCB October 1, 1901, page 582.1

If fifty thousand of our people were as brimful of information as to the preservation of health as it is their privilege to be, there might have been thousands of men and women alive, and enjoying the opportunities that a life brings in this wonderful age, who to-day are sleeping in the dust, Whether we shall compel the Lord to continue to raise up other people to do our missionary work for us or not, the future alone will reveal. One thing is certain, unless we become aroused on this subject as we have not been in the past, the stones will “immediately cry out,” and others will do our missionary work for us. God will not permit humanity to continue to drift upon the rocks as they are doing at present without a reasonable warning. Already, the daily press is loaded with truths of the same character as those intrusted to us more than a quarter of a century ago, and the people are being educated; but we might have had an opportunity to write these very articles. GCB October 1, 1901, page 582.2

Our health journals are filled with the very truths that the people need to save them from making physical shipwreck; yet, on this very day, they do not enter one in twenty of the homes of our people, and the little that is being done for others in each community testifies only too plainly that it is not because this instruction is not needed, but because we have not yet become thoroughly aroused upon this subject. GCB October 1, 1901, page 582.3

In almost every neighborhood little companies could be gathered together to study the truths that are contained in our health literature, and to exchange ideas as to what each had learned in regard to the preservation of health, which is so readily squandered, but so difficult to regain when lost. The world is organizing century clubs, health clubs, physical culture clubs, but to a large extent they miss the very principles that we could have given them if we had been prepared to lead out in these very movements. GCB October 1, 1901, page 582.4

The gospel command is just as imperative “to heal the sick” as it is to proclaim that “the kingdom of God is a hand;” and there is more genuine healing in preserving a man’s health than there is in healing him after he is sick, and it does not begin to require the same amount of skill. Shall we not arouse, as one man, and seek to restore the years which the cankerworm of neglect and indifference upon this subject has eaten away from us? If we do not, we may rest assured that deliverance will come from another source; but we will go down in the very destruction from which we have failed to try to save our neighbor. GCB October 1, 1901, page 582.5

Every Seventh-day Adventist family should be a health school, from which rays of light can reach out to the hearts of all who are willing to receive light. Every one of our homes should be a hospital, where the sick for whom nobody else will do anything, could be taken, and cared for tenderly until God restores them or death claims them. Every one of our homes should be a community “poorhouse” in the fullest sense of the word; and it will be so when Isaiah 58:7 is acted out, where the people who are especially shedding light on the Sabbath question are exhorted to “bring the poor that are cast out,”—that is, the undesirable poor—to their homes. We are to be God’s helping hand. God has no other hand with which to reach suffering humanity, only as he gets an opportunity to work through the hands of his children. Shall we lock our arms so closely together that we shall not have an opportunity to carry out his purpose, or shall we begin to do the very things that humanity needs to have done? When we do this, then we may rest assured that we shall discover for the first time the exact reason why the missionary spirit has been languishing among us as it has, and why God has not been giving us souls for our hire as in former years. God is bidding us to do our “first work,” and he never can trust us with the experience in the last half of Isaiah 58 until we have acted out the first half. Thousands of our people are expecting a harvest of blessing for which they have never sown. GCB October 1, 1901, page 582.6

We are exhorted to deal our bread to the hungry, and that does not mean merely the tramp and the beggar, but also the rich man who is trying to satisfy his hunger with unwholesome food that is not bread. How many of our people might, with a little careful study and experimentation, prepare wholesome and tasty health-food dinners, and then invite some of their business acquaintances to partake of the good things that God has given to us in this direction. Who can measure the God-given opportunities that might come to us through this one channel. Of course it will cost effort and trouble to do these things; but there will also be trouble for us in the day of God when we meet those whom we have allowed to go down to their graves without doing anything for them, simply because they were not interested in our literature, when God expected us to devise other ways of reaching them. GCB October 1, 1901, page 583.1

We are to clothe the naked, and that is not simply the man or woman who comes to us in tattered garments; for often their sufferings are not comparable to the pain and agony that thousands of others are enduring from unsuitable clothing. Life is an almost unendurable burden to tens of thousands of women in our land, because of the physical disaster, that unsuitable clothing has brought to them. Does this matter concern us or not? Shall God continually have to raise up agencies outside our denomination to respond to this wail of woe that is coming up from multitudes of invalids who have no idea as to why they are suffering as they are? GCB October 1, 1901, page 583.2

During the last generation the Lord has sent a flood of light to this people on the subject of proper training of children. This was to fit us to fulfill the prophecy pointed out in Malachi 4:6, in reference to the turning of “the heart of the fathers to the children, and the heart of the children to their fathers.” The Lord has shown to us that he intended our sisters to gather up this light to prepare them to attend mothers’ meetings, and to take part in them, or even to organize the same in the community where they live. But we have let other people do this work, and we have not yet become recognized as a people who are leading out in the very line that prophecy outlined for us. We never can make up for the neglect of the past, but may God help us to become aroused as to the future. GCB October 1, 1901, page 583.3

We are to “break every yoke,” and that includes such galling yokes as the liquor habit, tobacco habit, drug habit, tea and coffee habit, as well as the terrible bondage of immorality that is settling down upon the earth like a pall of death. Others about us have been organizing temperance societies, and attempting in a feeble way to accomplish something in the social purity work; while the Spirit of God has been exhorting us to lead out in these very directions, thus making a way for those not of our faith who are interested in these movements to stand shoulder to shoulder with us. But, as a matter of fact, hundreds of even our largest churches are doing nothing in these directions that would in any way suggest to others that we have received a special God-given commission on this subject. If we do not propose to enter into this field ourselves, we must at least bid those God-speed who are attempting in imperfect ways to accomplish that which we have failed to do. GCB October 1, 1901, page 583.4

As we labor for the drunkard and the harlot, even though our efforts do not seem to be crowned with success, it will result in fitting us to bear a real God-given message to those who have not yet sunk so low. There are wonderful opportunities which God will intrust to us just as soon as he sees that we are willing to enter the opening he already has provided. GCB October 1, 1901, page 583.5

The prisoners are groaning in some of the very cells that perhaps a little later some of us will occupy for the truth’s sake. What a satisfaction it will be to us then to know that our hearts reached out with an earnest desire to help the prisoner when we had an opportunity. “I was in prison and ye visited me,” are significant words that a divine hand would never have traced if they were not to mean something to his children. God has a work for our people to do for the prisoners that has not yet been done. We may do it, or he will raise up others to do it. There is a certain class of literature that we can send to them. There are other places where opportunities can be secured for holding gospel meetings. The Lord has wonderfully blessed the Life Boat wherever it has gone in our great prisons; but for lack of the necessary funds it is only now reaching a small number when it might as well reach tens of thousands. Prison wardens and people have written us that the prisoners sometimes continue to pass this paper from cell to cell until it is worn out, and we know that God has used it for the conversion of many a man behind the bars. GCB October 1, 1901, page 583.6

It is to the people who are heeding the admonition contained in Isaiah sixtieth chapter and first verse, “Arise, shine; for thy light is come,” who will have fulfilled for them the precious promise contained in the last verse of the same chapter: “A little one shall become a thousand, and a small one a strong nation: I the Lord will hasten it in his time.” We have reached the time of which it is said, “There shall be delay no longer.” Has not the day come when “the Lord shall defend the inhabitants of Jerusalem; and he that is feeble among them at that day shall be a David; and the house of David shall be as God, as the angel of the Lord before them;” and, “though ye have lain among the pots, yet shall ye be as the wings of a dove covered with silver, and her feathers with yellow gold”? DAVID PAULSON. GCB October 1, 1901, page 584.1