Des Moines, Iowa, October 19, 1898.
Dear brother N
... I am hoping to see you very soon, if the Lord will. Indeed I had hoped to be in L. before this, but one is not always able to make the feet go as fast as the heart, and God makes us feel our dependence on Him, which is ever good. My health has not been good, and I feel the need of taking care, and am not able to work as vigorously as in former days. I am hoping I may be able to go to L. sometime next week, and while there I will also hope to go out to M. and see you and others there, and perhaps we may see you at L. also, if the Lord will.
Perhaps we can have a few meetings in the schoolhouse near you... some gospel meetings. Perhaps the neighbors would turn out. We shall see, and in the meantime we can look to the Lord for guidance. It is a day of small things, and we must not be discouraged if we find people taking little interest in the truth, or even opposing it. We are just in the end of a broken-down and ruined dispensation, on which the judgment of God is about to fall, and we must not expect to see results such as were seen at the beginning when an ungrieved Spirit was working in great power.
I think we find much instruction in Ezra, Nehemiah, Haggai and Malachi for the present day, which is somewhat analogous to the time referred to in those books. The ten tribes had been carried away by Shalman-ezer, and were lost. Judah had been carried into Babylon, and spent 70 years in captivity. A remnant from Judah returned in the days of Ezra and Nehemiah, and the temple and the walls of the city were rebuilt. This return, and the building of the temple and walls of the city were all pure grace from the Lord. But we see on the part of the people so favored, a constant tendency to decline. They did not go on with the work as they should. They yielded to the influence of the enemy and the work ceased. Haggai charges them with living in celled houses, while God’s house lay waste, and they had to be stirred up afresh to go on with the work.
Then in Malachi, a little over 100 years later, we see most dreadful declension — a mass of profession without reality, in the midst of which were to be found a feeble few who “feared the Lord and spake often one to another.”
This little remnant alone gets the approval of the Lord, with the assurance that they should be His when He makes up His jewels. About 400 years later we still find this feeble remnant in such as Zachariah and Elizabeth, Mary, old Simeon and Anna, and the shepherds on the plains of Bethlehem. But oh! how few and how feeble. And it is something the same now, as we draw near the end — a great mass of profession, with but little reality.
But there are those the Lord owns, and of whom He can say, “Thou hast kept My word and hast not denied My name,” those too who have kept their garments, and who shall walk with Him in white.
The struggle will be short, for He is near, but it is real, and we need courage to stand, even if it be alone. There was a time when no man stood with Paul. But the Lord stood with him, and the testimony was given, and he was delivered out of the mouth of the lion. How blessed to be able to count on Him, though all others forsake! May we, dear brother, be strong in Him.
Hoping to see you soon...
Your affectionate brother in Christ,