July 2019 Signs of the Times Email Newsletter

[Stan]

The Signs of the Times newsletter is a collection of stories and quotes from past issues ofSigns and These Times. ***************************        Charles Wesley’s most important part of the great work of revival was in writing hymns, for he is remembered as the author of a vast collection. The versatile circuit rider was able to turn one out at the mere mention of a Bible text. As fast as he put them down on paper, his brother John published them. The number printed mounted into the scores, then into the hundreds, and finally into the thousands.      Today most of them may be forgotten, but certain old favorites have found a permanent place in the hymnal. Charles Wesley could match lines to almost any occasion. Is it Advent? For that he wrote, “Come, Thou Long-Expected Jesus.” Is it Christmas? Tens of thousands now sing his “Hark! The Herald Angels Sing.” Is it Easter? Everybody knows his “Christ the Lord Is Risen Today.”      Besides these, he was the author of countless songs of praise and consecration, among the most familiar of which are “Christ, Whose Glory Fills the Skies,” “Rejoice, the Lord Is King,” “Ye Servants of God, Your Master Proclaim,” “Soldiers of Christ, Arise,” “Blow Ye the Trumpet, Blow!” “Come, O Thou Traveler Unknown,” “O for a Heart to Praise My God,” and “A Charge to Keep I Have.”      The most popular of all his hymns is, of course, “Jesus, Lover of My Soul.” First published in 1740, it has been translated into every known language and sung in every country under the sun. In wartime it brought comfort to hundreds of dying soldiers. It has lifted the spirits of millions of forlorn sufferers.      Charles Wesley carried on his hymn-writing into the late evening of life. An acquaintance who saw him as he traveled about furnishes this striking picture: When he was nearing eighty, “he rode every day (clothed for winter even in summer) a little horse, gray with age. When he mounted, if a subject struck him, he proceeded to expand and put it in order. He would write a hymn thus given him, on a card kept for that purpose, with his pencil, in shorthand. Not infrequently he has come to the house in the City Road, and having left the pony in the garden in front, he would enter, crying out, ‘Pen and ink! Pen and ink!’ These being supplied, he wrote the hymn he had been composing. When this was done, he would look round on those present and salute them with much kindness, and thus put all in mind of eternity.”—By Vincent Edwards, These Times, May 1968. Quote: “Religion was intended to bring peace on earth, and good will towards men; and whatever tends to hatred and persecution, however correct in the letter, must be utterly wrong in the spirit.”—Unknown, Signs of the Times, May 22, 1917. *************************** Don't miss the August 2019 issue of Signs of the Times: To order Signs, CLICK HERE or call: 1-800-765-6955. ***************************      Charles Froelich, a farmer’s lad, living near Wellston, Ohio, was ambitious to complete a liberal education but did not have means sufficient to do so. He went to a physician in that city, Dr. E. S. Higley, and borrowed from him $700, and graduated from college as a mining engineer. This was in 1880.      Soon after, the young man went to Australia. Not a word was heard from him for twenty-five years, when one morning he came into Dr. Higley’s office and said he owed the doctor some money. He had changed in his appearance so that the doctor did not recognize him, and then he revealed his identity, and paid the $700 principal and compound interest on the same to date. He informed his benefactor that he had been successful in Australia and South Africa, and had amassed a fortune.      Mr. Froelich returned to Australia, and nothing was heard from him again until the day, when Henry K. Thornecroft, a lawyer of Melbourne, Australia, arrived in Wellston and notified Dr. Higley that Mr. Froelich had died without relatives, and had left his entire estate, valued at a million dollars, to his benefactor.—From The Christian Herald, Signs of the Times, September 9, 1913. Quote: “Quarrel not with God’s unfinished providences.”—Unknown, Signs of the Times, November 25, 1913. *************************** NEW from Pacific Press—Mightier Than A Lion, stories from Guide Magazine that inspire the entire family. Read the first chapter of this book online. Order online or from your local Adventist Book Center--1-800-765-6955. ***************************      Be kind to yourself and stop allowing failure to tie you in knots.      Look at baseball. We immortalize players like Mantle, Mays, Aaron, and Ruth. But how perfect were they? In an 18-year career Mickey Mantle batted .289. Willie Mays in 22 years batted .302. Home-run king Hank Aaron batted .305. Even the legendary Babe Ruth batted only .342. And in the process, he struck out 1,330 times. That’s a hit only once every three times at bat. Give yourself permission to be imperfect; permission to bat less than 1,000; permission to be human.—By Larry Neagle, Signs of the Times, March 1988. Quote: “Never bear more than one trouble at a time. Some people bear three—all they have had, all they have now, and all they expect to have.”—By Edward Everett Hale,Signs of the Times, November 25, 1913. *************************** Place this in your church bulletin or newsletter: Now is a great time to offer hope to your friends and neighbors. Signs of the Times® 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 ***************************      Think of the great speed-up in transportation in the last generation. Compare the stagecoach with the railroad train. In the year 1817, a member of the New York Legislature came to be regarded as a proper subject for a straitjacket because he expressed his belief that steam carriages would be operated successfully on land.      A little later—in Lancaster, Ohio—the use of the schoolhouse for a discussion on railroads was denied the young people of the community, the board giving their reasons as follows:      “You are welcome to use the school to debate all proper questions, but such things as railroads and telegraphs are impossibilities and rank infidelity. If God had designed that His intelligent creatures should travel at the frightful speed of fifteen miles an hour by steam, He would have clearly foretold it through His holy prophets. It is a device of Satan to lead immortal souls down to hell.”—By H. M. S. Richards, Signs of the Times, September 1, 1942. Quote: “Temptation is Satan looking through the keyhole. Yielding is opening the door and inviting him in.”—By Charles G. Bellah, Signs of the Times, November 19, 1929. *************************** Looking for a great eBook? Visit www.AdventistEBooks.Com ***************************      The average age of the world’s great civilizations has been 200 years. These nations progressed through this sequence:      “From Bondage to Spiritual Faith      “From Spiritual Faith to Great Courage      “From Courage to Liberty      “From Liberty to Abundance      “From Abundance to Selfishness      “From Selfishness to Complacency      “From Complacency to Apathy      “From Apathy to Dependence      “From Dependence Back Again to Bondage.”—By Alexander Fraser Tytler, quoted by Arthur S. Maxwell, Signs of the Times, December 1962. Quote: “Christianity has not been tried and found wanting. It has been found difficult and never sufficiently tried.”—By G. K. Chesterton, These Times, September 1967. *************************** Visit www.ToolsForEvangelism.Com for everything you need to give a Bible Study! ***************************      We pray, as we are taught, “Give us this day our daily bread.” A simple petition, but a wonderful one. It opens before us, if we will think, whole worlds of science.      Let us speak of its origin first. We are at the table, eating our dinner. A child, and we will have him a very intelligent child, a thinking child, for through his answers to our questions we must trace this truth, a child says, “Please give me some bread,” and he is given bread. If we ask, “Who gave you bread?” he may answer, “My mother. She handed it to me, she had cut it into slices; before that she had made it out of flour, and baked it. My mother gave me bread.”      “But,” you say to him, “your mother made it out of flour. Where did she get the flour?”      “Oh, my father bought it. So my father, too, gave me bread.”      “But where did father get it?”      “From the grocer. And the grocer got it from the miller. And the miller got it from the farmer.”      “So the farmer gave you bread. Where did he get it?”      “Oh, he grew it.”      “But what did he grow it from?”      “Well, you see, you take wheat and you sow it in the ground, and it makes more wheat. That is the way the farmer grew it.”      “But who gave the wheat to the farmer? And why does wheat make more wheat?”      At last we come to God. Within those seeds reposes life, marvelous life, which no man can fathom though he has it before him daily in multitudinous forms. That life is a gift of God. Before ever the request, “Give us this day our daily bread,” can be answered, there has had to come a long foresighted process made by the hand of God to bring that bread into being.—By A. W. Spalding, Signs of the Times. Quote: David Livingstone is recognized as one of the world’s foremost explorers and Christian missionaries. For thirty years he traveled through Africa, making friends wherever he went. His example and his death acted like an inspiration, filling Africa with an army of explorers and missionaries. In recognition of his sufferings and many compulsory delays to opening up the vast continent of Africa to Christian influence, his words, “I never made a sacrifice” have made an indelible impression on men’s hearts. Here is the glorious statement of this pure and tenderhearted man in its original setting: People talk of the sacrifice I have made in spending so much of my life in Africa. Can that be called a sacrifice which is simply paid back as a small part of a great debt owing to our God, which we can never repay? Is that a sacrifice which brings its own best reward in healthful activity, the consciousness of doing good, peace of mind, and a bright hope of a glorious destiny hereafter? Away with the word in such a view, and with such a thought! It was emphatically no sacrifice. Say rather it is a privilege. Anxiety, sickness, suffering or danger, now and then, with a foregoing of the common conveniences and charities of this life may make us pause and cause the spirit to waver and the soul to sink, but let this only be for a moment. All these are nothing when compared with the glory which shall hereafter be revealed in and for us. I never made a sacrifice. Of this we ought not to talk when we remember the great sacrifice which He made who left His Father’s throne on high to give Himself for us: “Who, being the brightness of that Father’s glory, and the express image of His person, and upholding all things by the word of His power, when He had by Himself purged our sins, sat down on the right hand of the Majesty on high.”—These Times, January 1962. *************************** Compiled by Dale Galusha. Please pass this newsletter on to others.

Copyright © 2019 Pacific Press, All rights reserved.  You are receiving this email because you asked to receive it.  Our mailing address is:  Pacific Press P.O. Box 5353 Nampa, ID 83653

[james423]

Very interesting. Thanks.