September 2015 Signs of the Times Newsletter

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September 2015 Signs of the Times Email Newsletter The Signs of the Times newsletter is a collection of stories and quotes from past issues ofSigns and These Times. ***************************      The Rev. J. Stuart Holden once asked a big soldier who was known through all the ranks for his glowing Christianity, how he was brought to Christ. His answer was this:      “There was a private in my company who had recently been converted. We gave that fellow an awful time. The devil got possession of me, and I made that man’s life a positive burden to him. Well, one terribly wet night he came in from sentry duty. Very tired, he knelt down before getting into bed to pray. My boots were heavy with wet and mud, and I just let him have one first on one side and then on the other side of his head; and he just went on with his prayer. Next morning I found those boots beautifully polished by the side of my bed. That was his reply to me; and it just broke my heart. I was saved that day.”—Unknown, Signs of the Times, March 3, 1936. Quote: D. L. Moody said he would travel a thousand miles for a good thought. It is related that he once offered a prize for the best thought submitted. The following won the prize: “Men complain because God has placed thorns upon roses. Wouldn’t it be better if they thanked God for putting roses on thorns?”—Unknown, Signs of the Times, February 25, 1936. *************************** Don't miss the October 2015 issue of Signs of the Times: To order Signs, call: 1-800-765-6955 or CLICK HERE to order online. ***************************      Once a man in India asked a holy man, “How can I find God?” Again and again he asked the question.      Finally the holy man said, “Let’s go to the River Ganges.” At the river the holy man seized him by the neck, plunged him under the water, and held him under till he nearly drowned. When the man had his breath back enough to speak, the holy man asked what he wished for most when he thought he was drowning.      “Air, of course—only air!”      “Exactly,” replied the holy man, “and when you want God as much as you then wanted air, you’ll find Him, but not before!”      Jesus said, “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind.”—Matthew 22:37—By Kenneth Holland, These Times, February 1964. Quote: “Most of us know perfectly well what we ought to do; our trouble is that we do not want to do it. Thy help is our only hope. Make us want to do what is right, and give us the ability to do it. . . . Wilt Thou reach down and change the gears within us that we may go forward with Thee. Amen.”—A Prayer by Peter Marshall, These Times, February 1964. *************************** NEW from Pacific Press—13 Weeks to Love by Jennifer Jill Schwirzer. In 13 Weeks to Love, author and speaker Jennifer Jill Schwirzer shows how to live God’s love and allow Him to heal your relationships. Love is fundamental to life itself—it’s all we really care about in the end, so shouldn’t we make it our first study, our science, and our song? 13 Weeks to Love is great for small group Bible studies with discussion questions and activities at the end of each chapter, and it is full of helpful tools to develop healthy, vibrant relationships. Speaking of Schwirzer’s 13 Weeks to Peace and 13 Weeks to Love, David Asscherick says, " I wish every church would run ongoing small groups and ministry events with these resources. Our churches need this material and so do our communities.” CLICK HERE to read the first chapter of this book online. Order ONLINE or from your local Adventist Book Center--1-800-765-6955. ***************************      The story is told of a wise old fox that was about to enter the mouth of a cave where the many footprints of his fellows told him that a multitude of foxes had gone in before him.      When just at the entrance he hesitated, for he noticed that all the tracks pointed in one direction—all were entering the cave but none returning. After a moment spent in seeming meditation, he turned away.      Many are the caves that men are entering today where the footprints all point inward.—By Charles L. Paddock, Signs of the Times, June 4, 1929. Quote: “To my mind this precious doctrine—for such I must call it—of the return of the Lord to this earth is taught in the New Testament as clearly as any other doctrine in it; yet I was in church fifteen or sixteen years before I ever heard a sermon on it. . . . Now, I can see a reason for this, the devil does not want us to see this truth, for nothing would wake up the church so much. The moment a man takes hold of the truth that Jesus Christ is coming back again to receive his followers to Himself, this world loses its hold on him. Gas stocks and water stocks, and stocks in banks and railroads are of very much less consequence to him then. His heart is free, and he looks for the blessed appearing of his Lord, who, at His coming, will take him into His blessed kingdom.”—By Dwight L. Moody, Signs of the Times, July 16, 1929. *************************** Place this in your church bulletin or newsletter: Signs of the Times® helps your friends and neighbors find hope and meaning. Each month it takes on a broken world and directs hearts to Jesus for relevant answers. The result is changed lives! Send a subscription today. Order from your Adventist Book Center. To order call: 1-800-765-6955 or online at:http://www.adventistbookcenter.com/signs-of-the-times-magazine-yearly-us-subscription.html ***************************       When former Senator Sam J. Ervin, Jr., of North Carolina learned of the tragic suicide of a twenty-three-year-old heroin addict who had on his person a twisted version of the twenty-third Psalm, he inserted “The Psalm of the Addict” into the Congressional Record. It reads:      “King Heroin is my shepherd, I shall always want. He maketh me to lie down in the gutters.      “He leadeth me beside the troubled waters. He destroyeth my soul.      “He leadeth me in the paths of wickedness for the effort’s sake.      “Yea, I shall walk through the valley of poverty and will fear all evil for thou, Heroin, art with me.      “Thy Needle and Capsule try to comfort me. Thou strippest the table of groceries in the presence of my family. Thou robbest my head of reason.      “My cup of sorrow runneth over. Surely heroin addiction shall stalk me all the days of my life, and I will dwell in the House of the Damned forever.”—By Kenneth J. Holland,These Times, December 1979. Quote: “The test of a people is how it behaves toward the old. It is easy to love children. Even tyrants and dictators make a point of being fond of children. But the affection and care of the old, the incurable, the helpless, are the true gold mines of a culture.”—By Abraham J. Heschel, These Times, October 1973. *************************** Looking for health-related materials you can share with friends? http://www.adventistbookcenter.com/featured/health-books.html ***************************      Hudson Taylor says of his conversion:      “One day, which I shall never forget, my dear mother being absent from home some eighty miles away, I had a holiday. I searched through the library for a book to while the time away. I selected a gospel tract which looked attractive saying, ‘There will be an interesting story at the commencement and a sermon or moral at the end. I will take the former and leave the latter for those who like it.’      “I little knew what was going on in the heart of my mother. She arouse from the dinner table with an intense yearning for the conversion of her boy, and feeling that being from home and having more leisure opportunity afforded her of pleading for me, she went to her bedroom, turned the key in the door, and resolved not to leave the room until her prayers were answered.      “Hour after hour did that dear mother plead for me, until she could praise God for the conversion of her son.      “In the meantime as I was reading the tract, a light was flashed into my soul by the Holy Spirit, that there was nothing to be done but to fall on my knees and accept the Saviour and His salvation, and praise God forevermore. While my mother was praising God in her closet, I was praising Him in the old warehouse where I had retired to read my book.      “When I met mother at the door, on her return, with the glad news, she said, ‘I know, my boy; I have been rejoicing for a fortnight in the glad tidings you have to tell me.’ “      I ask you, is there power in prayer?—By Mildred Grant, Signs of the Times, July 16, 1929. Quote:  “Gold will not be legal tender in the land where the streets are paved with it.”—By Charles G. Bellah, Signs of the Times, October 8, 1929. *************************** FREE!!!! In a new, 32-page magazine, veteran soul-winners, Mark and Teenie Finley, share outreach secrets that have been proven around the world to make a tremendous impact on soulwinning. The magazine is called 7 Keys to Successful Church Growth: Soul Winning Jesus’ Way, and it's filled with tested church growth principles along with practical resources for local church evangelism. CLICK HERE for a FREE copy! ***************************      Shall we linger for a moment and visit other men and women who refused to park by their pain, but who moved on past it—not the fact of it, but the futility of it—into productive, achieving lives?      Robert Louis Stevenson contracted tuberculosis in his early years and from then on for the rest of his life he knew sickness and pain and life-sapping struggle with relentlessly advancing death. Here is a letter he wrote to George Meredith in 1893:      “For fourteen years I have not had one day of real health. I have wakened sick and gone to bed weary, and yet I have done my work unflinchingly. I have written my books in bed and out of bed, written them when I was torn by coughing, written them during hemorrhages, written them when my head swam for weakness. I have now done this for so long that it seems to me I have won my wager and recovered my glove! But the battle still goes on—ill or well is a trifle so long as it goes.”      “The battle still goes on”—he hadn’t parked. And one can only begin to realize what those words meant when one reads words like these:      “When a temporary illness laid Stevenson on his back he wrote in bed one of his most thoughtful and careful essays—the one entitled ‘The Technical Elements in Style.’ When eye-trouble forced him into a darkened room he still wrote on in the diminished light. When after a severe hemorrhage his right arm had to be bound in a sling, he scrawled with his left hand some of the happy poems now included in his book A Child’s Garden of Verses. And when the hemorrhages finally became so severe that the doctor forbade him to talk, he actually tried to dictate in the deaf-and-dumb alphabet a portion of the book on which he was then working. Everything against him, and yet he carried on.”      That is to say, he refused to park. He refused to park by his illness, his suffering, his pain. Stevenson never moved beyond the fact of his pain until death released him. But he was constantly, throughout his entire productive life, moving beyond its futility, its mastery, it stifling grip.      You’re not feeling well and so you can’t accomplish anything? Think again of Robert Louis Stevenson, and let him inspire you into moving on past your pain into the accomplishment of something fine and good and beautiful and worthwhile.—By C. William Fisher, These Times, June 1969. Quote: “The study of the Bible is a postgraduate course in the richest library of human experience.”—By Herbert Hoover, These Times, June 1964. *************************** Looking for inspirational eBooks? CLICK HERE to find a wide assortment of great eBooks! *************************** I'd Rather. . . . I’d rather see a lecture than to hear one any day, I’d rather one should walk with me than merely show the way. The eye’s a better pupil and more willing than the ear; Fine counsel is confusing, but examples always clear; And the best of all the teachers are those who live their creeds, For to see the good in action is what everybody needs. I can learn how to do it if you’ll let me see it done; I can watch your hands in action, but your tongue too fast may run. And the lectures you deliver may be very wise and true, But I’d rather get my lessons by observing what you do. For I may misunderstand you and the high advice you give, But there’s no misunderstanding how you act and how you live.—From Pennsylvania School Journal, September 1961, These Times, March 1964. *************************** Compiled by Dale Galusha. Please pass this newsletter on to others.