Get Ready, Get Ready, Get Ready!
I really felt rebuked by the following quotes; we all should. These days, we either rent a single auditorium or something of that nature, or we might pitch a single tent. We generally only do these things for fairly large cities and leave it to local believers to struggle to spread the Gospel in smaller towns (or even large towns). If we don’t feel rebuked by the below quote … I don’t even know what to say about how Laodicean our condition is. And yet, they were already Laodicea at that time and we can see they were not receiving the needed funds from the membership, even though they still had a lot more willing hands than we usually do! Moreover, they were clearly willing to go forward in faith even without sufficient funds. We have a long way to go, friends. May the Lord help us to get ready!
Tent Meetings in Maitland
“There are quite a number of workers, but not enough to fill the places where there is an interest created. All the way from Maitland to Newcastle, a distance of twenty-five miles, are places to be worked. The people are calling for help. They want the Scriptures opened to them.
“[…] The Lord is at work, opening doors for us. Last Sunday we had a review of matters, to see if we could possibly hold our present number of workers. We feel that we cannot do this, for we cannot do this, for we cannot pay them their wages. May the Lord teach us what to do. Five tents could be pitched in various places within a few miles of Maitland and Newcastle. I intend to speak in several towns. […]
“We have now been holding meetings for several weeks, and new ones are becoming interested in the truth. What a work this is! My heart is in it. This is the last message of mercy to be given to a people who have never had the third angel’s message. I wish you could hear these people speak. Many of them are intelligent men and women. One said, ‘I have been a member of the church for forty years, but I now see that I know very little of the Scriptures. I never knew there were such precious things in the Scriptures. I never knew there were such precious things in the Bible.’ Another man said, ‘I have purchased a Bible, that I may take it with me and mark the passages; then I shall not forget them. I have been for many years a church member.’”
— E. G. White, Letter 194, 1899
Avoiding Prejudice
In another place, she also mentioned needing to put up the tents fast in areas where there was already prejudice against the third angel’s message, so that the local clergy wouldn’t have time to warn their churches against us. That meant there were occasions when they did no advertising ahead of time, yet people still came to the meetings. We have no excuses. What are we lacking? We already received the answer only a little while after the sealing began in 1848. Oh, my friends, we need to fall at the feet of Jesus and plead for Him to show us where in our lives we have not yet died to self and allowed Him to take full control!
Get Ready, Get Ready, Get Ready!
“In a view given June 27, 1850, my accompanying angel said, ‘Time is almost finished. Do you reflect the lovely image of Jesus as you should?’ Then I was pointed to the earth and saw that there would have to be a getting ready among those who have of late embraced the third angel’s message. Said the angel, ‘Get ready, get ready, get ready. Ye will have to die a greater death to the world than ye have ever yet died.’ I saw that there was a great work to do for them and but little time in which to do it.
“Then I saw that the seven last plagues were soon to be poured out upon those who have no shelter; yet the world regarded them no more than they would so many drops of water that were about to fall. I was then made capable of enduring the awful sight of the seven last plagues, the wrath of God. […] Terror seized me, and I fell upon my face before the angel and begged of him to cause the sight to be removed, to hide it from me, for it was too dreadful. Then I realized, as never before, the importance of searching the Word of God carefully, to know how to escape the plagues which that Word declares shall come on all the ungodly who shall worship the beast and his image and receive his mark in their foreheads or in their hands.”
— E. G. White, Early Writings, pp. 64-65
