Who can tell the work that might have been done in our churches, if those who had advocated the truth had not left these feeble churches, to crowd into Battle Creek? If all our people had been faithful, diligent, God-fearing servants of Christ, and had put forth efforts to make their influence as far-reaching as possible at home, where they were, how many souls might have been saved! One taper kindled in one place might have been the means of kindling many others, and the result would have been that the voice of praise and thanksgiving would have been heard, and many would have said: “What hath God wrought! He hath done exceedingly abundantly above all that we asked or thought.”
(TM 208.1)
MC
VC
It is not in the order of God that any man, or any class of men, should assume that God has made them conscience for their brethren, or put forth their finite hand in a patronizing manner to control the Lord’s delegated workers, thus endangering the safety of the Lord’s heritage as well as their own, and retarding the work of God. God does not confine Himself to one man, or to a set of men, through whom to accomplish His work, but says of all, Ye “are laborers together with God.”1 Corinthians 3:9. This means that every believing soul should have a part to act in His sacred work, and every individual believer in Jesus Christ is to manifest to the world a symbol of Christ’s sufficiency, to represent to His church the higher laws of the future immortal world, and in obedience to the mandates of Heaven that are without a parallel, they should reveal a depth of knowledge independent of human inventions.
(TM 208.2)
MC
VC