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Dear Brothers and Sisters in
IAUA
(ee-ah-oo-ah) our Father,
Greetings on this day of preparation for the weekly Sabbath.
I pray this newsletter finds you in good health and happy in the service of
IAUA.
This is the
18th
day of the
3rd
month of
God's Sacred Calendar
in the estimated year
6016
Anno Mundi.
The fall holy day season begins with Trumpets Sabbath in
14 weeks and three days
starting the evening of the
1st day of the
7th month
(Monday, September 17th on the
2012,
Gregorian Calendar,
beginning sunset on Sunday, September 16th).
An amazing thing occurs in the Gregorian Calendar years of both 2011 and 2012. Those who follow the
Millerite Calendar (Spring New Moon Rule)
and the
Jewish Calendar
agree with the Spring Passover Rule dates my research, and others, has determined for the
Gregorian Calendar
dates of
God's Sacred Calendar!
I have been pondering the often debated question about the relationship between faith and works.
19
I know thy works, and charity, and service, and faith, and thy patience, and thy works; and the last to be more than the first.
Revelation 2:19
The criticism against those who obey all that God asks is often the charge of "works". These quotes speak volumes to me. What do they say to you?
It is not enough to merely profess faith in the commandments of God; you must be a doer of the work. You are a transgressor of His law. You do not love God with all your heart, might, mind, and strength; neither do you live in obedience to the last six commandments and love your neighbor as yourself. You love yourself more than you love God or your neighbor. Keeping the commandments of God requires more of us than you are willing to perform. God requires of you good works, self-denial, self-sacrifice, and devotion to the good of others, that through your instrumentality souls may be brought to the truth. {4T 228.1}
Our good works alone will not save any of us, but we cannot be saved without good works. And after we have done all that we can do, in the name and strength of Jesus we are to say: "We are unprofitable servants." We are not to think that we have made great sacrifices and that we should receive great reward for our feeble services. {4T 228.2}
Self-righteousness and carnal security have closed you about as with bands of iron. You need to be zealous and repent. You have been unfortunate in sympathizing with the disaffected, whose course has been in opposition to the work that the Lord through His servants was doing upon this coast. The wrong men have had your sympathy. Because your heart was not right with God, you did not receive the light He sent to you. You set up your stubborn will to resist the reproof which the Lord gave to you in love. You knew these things were true, but tried to close your eyes to the true state of your case. Whether you heed the voice of reproof and warning God has sent to you or not; whether you reform, or retain your defects of character, you will one day realize what you have lost by placing yourself in a defiant position, warring in spirit against the servants of God. Your bitterness of feeling toward Elder H is astonishing. He has endured and sacrificed and toiled on this coast to do the work of God. But in your blindness, while unconsecrated in heart and life, you have ventured, in connection with I and J, to handle the servant of God in a cruel manner. "Touch not Mine anointed," saith God, "and do My prophets no harm." It is not a small matter for you to array yourself, as you have done, against men whom God has sent with light and truth for the people. Beware how your influence turns souls from the truth which God has sent His servants to declare, for a heavy woe hangs over you. {4T 228.3}
Satan has been using you as his agent to insinuate doubts and to reiterate insinuations and misrepresentations which have originated in an unsanctified heart, which God would have cleansed from its pollution. But you refused to be instructed, refused correction, rejected reproof, and followed your own will and way. Souls are defiled by this root of bitterness and are, through these questioning, murmuring ones, placed where the testimony of reproof which God sends will not reach them. The blood of these souls will be chargeable to you and to the spirits with whom you are in harmony. {4T 229.1}
God has given us, as His servants, our work. He has given us a message to bear to His people. For thirty years we have been receiving the words of God and speaking them to His people. We have trembled at the responsibility, which we have accepted with much prayer and meditation. We have stood as God's ambassadors, in Christ's stead beseeching souls to be reconciled to God. We have warned of danger as God has presented before us the perils of His people. Our work has been given us of God. What, then, will be the condition of those who refuse to hear the words which God has sent them, because they cross their track or reprove their wrongs? If you are thoroughly convinced that God has not spoken by us, why not act in accordance with your faith and have no more to do with a people who are under so great a deception as this people are? If you have been moving according to the dictates of the Spirit of God you are right and we are wrong. God is either teaching His church, reproving their wrongs and strengthening their faith, or He is not. This work is of God, or it is not. God does nothing in partnership with Satan. My work for the past thirty years bears the stamp of God or the stamp of the enemy. There is no halfway work in the matter. The Testimonies are of the Spirit of God, or of the devil. In arraying yourself against the servants of God you are doing a work either for God or for the devil. "By their fruits ye shall know them." What stamp does your work bear? It will pay to look critically at the result of your course. {4T 229.2}
It is not a new thing for a man to be deluded by the arch-deceiver and array himself against God. Consider your course critically before you venture to go any further in the path you are traveling. The Jews were self-deceived. They rejected the teachings of Christ because He exposed the secrets of their hearts and reproved their sins. They would not come to the light, fearing that their deeds would be reproved. They chose darkness rather than light. "This is the condemnation," said Christ, "that light is come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil." The Jews pursued their course of rejecting Christ until, in their self-deceived, deluded state, they thought that in crucifying Him they were doing God service. This was the result of their refusing light. You are in danger of similar deception. It will be profitable for your soul, Brother G, to consider where the path which you are now traveling will end. God can do without you, but you cannot afford to do without God. He does not compel any man to believe. He sets light before men, and Satan presents his darkness. While the deceiver is constantly crying, "Light is here; truth is here," Jesus is saying: "I am the truth; I have the words of eternal life. If any man follow Me, he shall not walk in darkness." God gives to us all evidence sufficient to balance our faith on the side of truth. If we surrender to God we shall choose the light and reject the darkness. If we desire to maintain the independence of the natural heart, and refuse the correction of God, we shall, as did the Jews, stubbornly carry out our purposes and our ideas in the face of the plainest evidence, and shall be in danger of as great deception as came upon them; and in our blind infatuation we may go to as great lengths as they did, and yet flatter ourselves that we are doing work for God. {4T 230.1}
Brother G, you will not long stand where you now are. The path you have started upon is diverging from the true path and separating you from the people whom God is testing in order to purify them for the final victory. You will either come into union with this body, and labor earnestly to answer the prayer of Christ, or you will become more and more unbelieving. You will question point after point of the established faith of the body, become more self-willed in your opinion, and grow darker and darker in regard to the work of God for this time, until you set light for darkness and darkness for light. {4T 231.1}
Satan has great power to entangle souls by confusing the minds of those who do not cherish the light and the privileges which Providence sends them. Minds which are submitted to Satan's control are led continually from the light of truth into error and darkness. If you give Satan the least advantage, he will claim more and will watch the outposts to make the most of any circumstance to advantage his cause and ruin your soul. {4T 231.2}
Brother and Sister G, you are neither of you in a safe position. You despise reproof. Had smooth words been spoken to you rather than words of reproof, had you been praised and flattered, you would now occupy a very different position from what you do in regard to your belief in the Testimonies. There are some in these last days who will cry: "Speak unto us smooth things, prophesy deceits." But this is not my work. God has set me as a reprover of His people; and just so surely as He has laid upon me the heavy burden, He will make those to whom this message is given responsible for the manner in which they treat it. God will not be trifled with, and those who despise His work will receive according to their deeds. I have not chosen this unpleasant labor for myself. It is not a work which will bring to me the favor or praise of men. It is a work which but few will appreciate. But those who seek to make my labor doubly hard by their misrepresentations, jealous suspicions, and unbelief, thus creating prejudice in the minds of others against the Testimonies God has given me, and limiting my work, have the matter to settle with God, while I shall go forward as Providence and my brethren may open the way before me. In the name and strength of my Redeemer I shall do what I can. I shall warn and counsel and reprove and encourage as the Spirit of God dictates, whether men will hear or whether they will forbear. My duty is not to please myself, but to do the will of my heavenly Father, who has given me my work. {4T 231.3}
Faith, light, truth, and practice...
There has been a neglect on the part of the ministers. They have not urged home to the hearts of their hearers the necessity of faithfulness. They have not educated the church on all points of truth and duty nor labored with zeal to bring them into working order and to get them interested in every branch of the cause of God. I have been shown that had the church been properly educated, they would have been far in advance of their present position. The neglect on the part of the ministers has made the people careless and unfaithful. They have not felt their individual responsibility, but have excused themselves on account of the failure of the ministers to do the work of a pastor. But God does not hold them excused. Had they no Bible, had they no warnings, reproofs, and entreaties from heaven to bring duty to their minds, there would be less condemnation. But the Lord has given counsel and instruction; the duty of each individual has been made so plain that he need make no mistake. {5T 302.2}
God gives light to guide those who honestly desire light and truth; but it is not His purpose to remove all cause for questioning and doubt. He gives sufficient evidence to found faith upon, and then requires men to accept that evidence and exercise faith. {5T 303.1}
He who will study the Bible with a humble and teachable spirit will find it a sure guide, pointing out the way of life with unfailing accuracy. But what does your study of the Bible avail, brethren and sisters, unless you practice the truths it teaches? That holy book contains nothing that is nonessential; nothing is revealed that has not a bearing upon our actual lives. The deeper our love for Jesus, the more highly we shall regard that word as the voice of God directly to us. {5T 303.2}
Will you study the Bible with a humble and teachable spirit?
I pray we may all continue to seek love, peace, and unity in truth preparing for the soon coming of IAUShUO (ee-ah-oo-shoo-oh) Messiah, the Son of God.
Frank T. Clark
Eliau@IAUA.name
www.IAUA.name
Next:
2012-06-15
Faith, Evidence, and Doubt
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