Is not this the fast that I have chosen? to loose the bands of wickedness, to undo the heavy burdens, and to let the oppressed go free, and that ye break every yoke? Is it not to deal thy bread to the hungry, and that thou bring the poor that are cast out to thy house? Isaiah 58:6, 7.

We are living in the last days of this earth’s history, and it is time we understood what we must do to be saved. The Lord will work intelligently for all who will work intelligently for Him. My brethren and sisters, there is something more for you to do than to sit in your churches Sabbath after Sabbath and to listen to the preaching of the Word. You have a work to do for [your] friends and neighbors. God requires … that you visit these families and seek to create an interest in the truth for this time. You are not laboring together with God if you neglect the work of helping others to take hold upon eternal realities.

Our ministers are not to be encouraged to hover about the churches to repeat to the believers week after week the same truths. We have a truth that is saving and precious. The Word of God must be planted in many hearts; the bread of life must be dealt out to many hungering souls…. It is a blessed work to lift up Christ before the world.

When the work of the judgment is finished and decisions have been made for eternity, it will be seen that it is those who have given themselves wholeheartedly to the service of God who will stand right with heaven. Some of these may not have been able to leave their families to go to some mission field, but they have been missionaries in their own neighborhood. Their hearts have been so filled with the love of God that their great anxiety has been to win souls for Him. This has been more to them than silver and gold and the precious things of this world. And as they have labored in simplicity to minister the Word of truth, the Spirit of God has sent home the Word to the hearts of the people.

My brethren and sisters, let us study the simplicity there is in the Word of God. Let us see what we can do to advance the cause of Christ in the earth. Christ was in this world as a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief. There were many who set themselves against His work. There will be those who will oppose you. But your work is to preach Christ and Him crucified; and when you do this, the salvation of God will be revealed in the conversion of souls….

Let the light shine where you are. Lay hold of the power that there is in Christ, and learn to overcome through the merits of His blood and the word of your testimony.—Manuscript 93, September 7, 1909, “Address to the Church at Salt Lake City.”

From The Upward Look – Page 264

Behold, some of the watch came into the city, and shewed unto the chief priests all the things that were done. Matthew 28:11.

The angels of the Lord excel in strength. One angel appeared before the Roman guard appointed to watch Christ’s tomb and caused them to fear and quake and to become as powerless as dead men. Yet the whole scene was forever stamped on their minds. A mighty angel with exceeding great glory descended from the heavens to the earthly sepulcher, and laying hold on the sealed stone, removed it as he would a pebble. Then the mighty angel, with a voice that caused the earth to quake, was heard to say, “Jesus, Thou Son of God, Thy Father calls Thee.” Then He who had earned the power to conquer death and the grave came forth, and proclaimed over the rent sepulcher of Joseph, “I am the resurrection and the life.”

The soldiers hastened to the priests, and with quaking hearts told them what had happened. The faces of the priests were as those of the dead. Caiaphas tried to speak. His lips moved, but they uttered no sound. The soldiers were about to leave the council room when a voice stayed them. Caiaphas had at last found speech. “Wait, wait,” he said. “Tell no one the things you have seen.”

A lying report was given to the soldiers. “Say ye,” said the priests, “his disciples came by night, and stole him away while we slept” (Matthew 28:13). The soldiers sold their integrity for money. They came in before the priests burdened with a most startling message of truth; they went out with a burden of money and on their tongues a lying report which had been framed for them by the priests.

The lying report was spread far and near. But there were witnesses to Christ’s resurrection whom the priests could not silence. Certain of the dead who came forth with Christ appeared to many and declared that He had risen. And Christ Himself remained with His disciples for forty days after He rose from the dead, and before His ascension [He] gave them their commission, bidding them go into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature.

In this age, a time of satanic wonders, everything conceivable will be said and done to deceive if possible the very elect. Let believers say nothing to extol Satan’s power. The Lord will distinguish His commandment-keeping people with signal marks of His favor, if they will be molded and fashioned by His Spirit, and built up in the most holy faith, hearkening strictly to the voice of His Word.—Letter 195, September 6, 1903, to W. C. White.

From The Upward Look – Page 263

The works of his hands are verity and judgment; all his commandments are sure. They stand fast for ever and ever, and are done in truth and uprightness. Psalm 111:7, 8.

Satan is at work from beneath to stir up the hellish powers of his confederacy of evil against the just. He imbues human agencies with his own attributes. Evil angels united with evil men will put forth efforts to harass, persecute, and destroy. But the Lord God of Israel will not forsake those who trust in Him. Amid the strengthening of infidelity and apostasy, amid the pretended illumination which is the blindest presumption and delusion, there will be a light from the sanctuary above shining upon God’s people. The truth of God will triumph.

The commandments of God will be trampled underfoot, as they were trampled upon by Satan in heaven. Unless God pours His converting power and grace upon the soul, there will be no attempt to oppose Satan, but men will be under his control, his willing captives. The enmity against Satan is put in man by God Himself. God calls upon His people to occupy a distinct, decided position. The righteous fervor with which Christ denounced every abomination in our world, the unsullied purity, which made manifest the corruption of those that deceived the people by an appearance of sanctity, excited bitter hostility against Him.

Today the same attitude on the part of His people will call forth similar treatment. Every person will be arrayed under one of the two banners. The chosen and loyal will stand under the bloodstained banner of Prince Emmanuel, and all others under Satan’s standard. All who are on Satan’s side will unite with him in honoring the spurious Sabbath, thus paying homage to the man of sin, who has exalted himself above all that is called God and [who] has thought to change times and laws. They trample upon the laws of Jehovah and frame laws to compel all to worship the false Sabbath, the idol they have exalted. But the day of deliverance to God’s people is not far distant.

I wish that all could appreciate the wonderful working of God in behalf of man. For fallen angels there has been no atonement; but for fallen man a full and ample offering has been made to save to the uttermost all who shall come unto God by Him. He will not turn away one repentant seeker. “For verily he took not on him the nature of angels; but he took on him the seed of Abraham [that humanity might reach humanity, and divinity lay hold upon divinity]” (Hebrews 2:16).—Letter 33, September 5, 1892, to S. N. Haskell.

From The Upward Look – Page 262

For a fire is kindled in mine anger, and shall burn unto the lowest hell, and shall consume the earth with her increase, and set on fire the foundations of the mountains. Deuteronomy 32:22.

Every satanic agency is now at work with power from beneath. The day of death is not set before us in the Word as the great constraining motive impelling us to be wide awake and determined in improving our opportunities. What motive does God present in His Word to all His workers? … “The great day of the Lord is near, it is near, and hasteth greatly” (Zephaniah 1:14). And before the coming of this last great day, we are to proclaim the last message of mercy to a fallen world, to prepare men and women for the Lord’s second coming.

Everything that can be devised by the enemy to occupy the mind, and to divert attention from this message, will be devised. But we are to go forward in the proclamation of the Word of the Lord. The end of all things is at hand. The coming of the Lord in the clouds of heaven, with power and great glory, is very near….

In the day of His coming, the last great trumpet is heard, and there is a terrible shaking of earth and heaven. The whole earth, from the loftiest mountains to the deepest mines, will hear. Everything will be penetrated by fire. The tainted atmosphere will be cleansed by fire. The fire having fulfilled its mission, the dead that have been laid away in the grave will come forth—some to the resurrection of life, to be caught up to meet their Lord in the air, and some to behold the coming of Him whom they have despised and whom they now recognize as the Judge of all the earth.

All the righteous are untouched by the flames. They can walk through the fire, as Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego walked in the midst of the furnace heated seven times hotter than it was wont to be heated. The Hebrew worthies could not be consumed, because the form of the fourth, the Son of God, was with them. So in the day of the coming of the Lord, smoke and flame will be powerless to harm the righteous. Those who are united with the Lord will escape unscathed. Earthquakes, hurricanes, flame, and flood cannot injure those who are prepared to meet their Saviour in peace. But those who rejected our Saviour, and scourged and crucified Him, will be among those who will be raised from the dead to behold His coming in the clouds of heaven, attended by the heavenly host—ten thousand times ten thousand, and thousands of thousands….

This scene has been presented before me as fully as I could bear to behold it. Then the scene has changed, and scenes of things existing at the present time have passed before me—Manuscript 159, September 4, 1903, “A Message to Leading Physicians.”

From The Upward Look – Page 261

And without controversy great is the mystery of godliness: God was manifest in the flesh, justified in the Spirit, seen of angels, preached unto the Gentiles, believed on in the world, received up into glory. 1 Timothy 3:16.

Was the human nature of the Son of Mary changed into the divine nature of the Son of God? No, the two natures were mysteriously blended in one person—the Man Christ Jesus. In Him dwelt all the fullness of the Godhead bodily. When Christ was crucified, it was His human nature that died. Deity did not sink and die; that would have been impossible. Christ, the Sinless One, will save every son and daughter of Adam who accepts the salvation proffered them, consenting to become the children of God. The Saviour has purchased the fallen race with His own blood. This is a great mystery, a mystery that will not be fully, completely understood in its greatness until the translation of the redeemed shall take place. Then the power and greatness and efficacy of the gift of God to man will be understood. But the enemy is determined that this gift shall be so mystified that it will become as nothingness….

Who by searching can find out God to perfection? The Gospels set forth the character of Christ as infinitely perfect. I wish I could speak of this so that the whole world could hear the object of Christ’s mission and work. Read and search the Scriptures, in which Christ is set forth as the divine object of our faith. When finite man, under the subtle influence of the tempter, comes to question the words of the One who is called “Wonderful, Counsellor, The mighty God, The everlasting Father, The Prince of Peace” (Isaiah 9:6), his conceptions of himself increase, and his conceptions of Christ and God decrease….

The most gifted men on the earth could all find abundant employment, from now until the judgment, for all their God-given powers in exalting the character of Christ. But they would still fail to present Him as He is. The mysteries of redemption, embracing Christ’s divine-human character, His incarnation, His atonement for sin, could employ the pens and the highest mental powers of the wisest men from now until Christ shall be revealed in the clouds of heaven in power and great glory. But though these men should seek with all their power to give a representation of Christ and His work, the representation would fall far short of the reality….

The theme of redemption will employ the minds and tongues of the redeemed through everlasting ages. The reflection of the glory of God will shine forth forever and ever from the Saviour’s face.—Letter 280, September 3, 1904, to “Ministers, Physicians, and Teachers.”

From The Upward Look – Page 260