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Catalog #P911022
By Carlyle B. Haynes
World developments have created enormous opportunities for skilled workers to engage in a highly rewarding service. This is a call to you to qualify for the most satisfying employment known to men.
The government of Heaven is carrying forward a great enterprise on earth. Commissions are available to men and women of special qualifications to engage in this enterprise as representatives and ambassadors of the Heavenly government. The returns are beyond computation. The great need is not money. It is men.
Our divine Lord, looking at the multitudes of lost men, "was moved with compassion on them, because they fainted, and were scattered abroad, as sheep having no shepherd";1 Matthew 9:36 and He uttered a great word: "The harvest truly is plenteous, but the labourers are few; pray ye therefore the Lord of the harvest that He will send forth labourers into His harvest."2 Matthew 9:37-38
We are exhorted to pray, not for money to send forth and support laborers, but for laborers themselves. Once the laborers are found all other things will follow.
The supreme need, then, to complete the work of God on earth is laborers. One of the most difficult tasks is to find them.
In order to find them a call is issued. It is not the call of any human organization. It is a call from God. It has come to you. You have it in your hands. THIS IS IT!
Having reached you, the call, being God's call to you, should be given most serious consideration. God wants you for special service, high service, commissioned service, on business for eternity.
If you can work at all, why work at anything but God's work?
If you can engage in business, why not engage in God's business?
If you can sell anything, why sell anything but books, God's books?
If you can distribute anything, why not distribute the truth?
This is not merely big business; it is the biggest business.
What about it? Will you look at these questions, consider this call, look up - on your knees - into God's face and give Him your answer?
What I am presenting to you is the heaven-appointed literature ministry. What I am spreading before you is the call of God to become a literature evangelist. What I am asking you to do is to engage in the work of God. What I am offering you is thrilling association with God in His agelong enterprise of "working salvation in the midst of the earth."3 Psalm 74:12 What I am opening before you is fascinating, soul-satisfying participation in the grandest project of the centuries - appointment and commission as representatives of God.
There is one prime requisite for God's service in His vineyard. It is that of a real and special call. "There was a man sent from God, whose name was John."4 John 1:6 God knew John. He knows you. He knew John's name. He knows yours. He called John. He is calling you. He had a work for John. He has a work for you. He sent John. He wants to send you. Will you heed your call?
God needs men, but they must be men sent from God. Tending the vines of the vineyard of God, gleaning fruit when the harvest comes, is not easy. There are discouragements, adversities, hardships, toil, adversaries. Unless a man is deeply conscious that God has called him he will not carry through. Nothing is so reassuring to God's man as the conviction of the divine call. With that he must succeed.
God trains His men. Then He completely equips them. Then He works miracles for them and through them. And He Himself works with them, "even unto the end of the world."5 Matthew 28:20
Abraham, Moses, David, were chosen, called, sent, and trained for their respective places, Abraham in the hard school of experience; Moses in the arts of Egypt; David in the shepherd's fields.
The disciples, while deprived of a formal education, nevertheless had the greatest of all training - three years spent under the tutelage and in the presence of the Lord Jesus.
And since Bible times every servant of God who has been much used of Him has been a man trained for His work.
We do not decry a trained ministry; we insist on it. You may enter on that training the instant you are ready to begin. Then God puts into your hands, as He did in Moses', an agency for working miracles. And as you use it He accompanies it "with signs following."6 Mark 16:20 He uses you to place this agency in the hands of lost men and women.
No man has words to describe what an agency for working miracles God has given His people in the amazing literature we have. We put it into the homes and into the hands of men and women, and leave it there. Then God takes over, and works miracles with it. He is doing it all the time. Around the circle of the earth His miracle working with the printed page never ceases.
In every land, and upon all people, no matter how widely separated they may be by race, color, language, or creed, the effect of divine literature is the same.
God has made adequate provision for your certain success. No workers are in a position to observe the miracle-working power of the living God as are literature evangelists. As they leave literature in the hands of the people, prejudices are broken down, obstacles are cleared away, convictions are changed, minds are illuminated, beliefs are established, hearts are melted, and souls are reborn into God's Kingdom as His Spirit uses these little pieces of printed paper which He calls upon you to place where they can be so used.
It is impossible for us to comprehend the amazing energy, the extraordinary, dynamic power, there is in printed words. Nor do we need to. We can believe it. And we can be faithful in placing the printed word where God can release its energy to save souls. This is our task, our responsibility, our duty. God will do the rest. And, oh, what a joy it is to see Him doing it!
Over in old Nicodemia, a Christian worker, merely passing through, and having no time to remain, left with a stranger a gospel tract, and went on. Seventeen years later, stopping there again, he found a church of more than forty members, and a Christian community of more than two hundred that had grown out of that single tract.
In China there is a group of eight churches raised up by tracts alone.
In Brazil there are twoscore groups of hungry, eager believers who, though never having seen a preacher, were brought to the Light by the printed page.
Yes, there is life in this widely scattered seed. And let us remember, the life is in the seed, not in the sower. Even infidels have unwittingly scattered some of this seed, and it has grown and produced fruit.
Thistledown, someone has called it. That is what it is, divine thistledown. We scatter it, and thereby we are liberating thistledown carrying precious seed. The winds of the Spirit carry it here and there over all the world. It settles down and grows and produces its own life in human souls. An abundant harvest is in the making. What a great privilege it is to be called of God to be sowers of such seed!
What marvelous seed we bear in our hands! These printed words never waver or flinch. They never dodge or display cowardice. They never change their testimony or compromise their witnessing. They never tire or become exhausted. They never lose heart or become discouraged. Under all circumstances, regardless of all forbidding conditions, they keep on saying the same thing.
How easily transported they are! They travel at the lowest cost. They get about with the most amazing ease. They penetrate everywhere. O Brethren, set them free, and watch them do their marvelous, God-guided work.
You do not need to hire a hall for these printed words. They are their own advertisements. They need no announcing. They make their own announcements. Just set them free, and watch them go to work.
And how they work! They never stop. They work while we sleep. We must stop and renew our energies, take food, and rest. Not they. They go right on, night and day, winter and summer. Rebuffs do not stop them. They take no offense. They do not lose their tempers. They do not answer back. They just go right on, saying only the same thing over and over. People may get angry and lash out at them. It makes no difference. They continue their witnessing, never retracting, never withdrawing, never changing. And they go right on working long after we retire on account of old age, even long after we are dead.
This is a good business to be in. This is good seed to scatter. Let us scatter it faithfully. Let us scatter it widely. Let us scatter it diligently. And let us never stop scattering it.
These printed words are visitors that get inside people's homes. And they stay there. You may be shut out. Be of good cheer. The printed word gets in. And it goes right to work. Always it catches a man in the right mood, for it speaks to him only when he reads it. How it grapples with his mind, searches into the innermost parts of his heart, strikes at the very citadel of his soul, and never stops until he surrenders. Then it is ready to take on someone else, and renew its witnessing, and carry on its never-ending propaganda for God.
These printed word will reach those whom we cannot reach, who will give us no hearing at all, who are unreachable by any other method or means. They go out after those who would never come to a meeting, who would bar us from their homes, who would close their hearts to any appeal we made. Indeed, these printed words may bear the only chance many a man may ever have of eternal life.
There is no end to the good they may do. No man can ever trace the influence of gospel literature to its end. It goes on forever. Luther wrote a pamphlet on Galatians. This fell into the hands of John Bunyan. It converted him. Bunyan wrote Pilgrim's Progress. This has had a remarkable circulation. So Luther's tract still influences people around the world.
Not only spiritual effects result from these printed words. They affect politics and governments, and bring about mighty changes in human affairs. Think of that young Frenchman, wounded at the siege of Saint Quentin, and convalescing in a hospital, in whose bed some person, now unknown, placed a tract. He read it and was converted. His monument may be seen today in front of the Church of the Consistory in Paris. He stands with a Bible in his hand - Admiral Coligny, the leader of the Reformation in France.
But the tract went on with its work. Admiral Coligny's nurse was a Catholic nun. She carried the tract, in penitence, to her lady abbess. The abbess was converted by it, and had to flee from France. She went to the Palatinate, met a young Hollander, married him, and the influence she had on her husband changed the whole continent of Europe, for he was William of Orange, the champion of human liberties and of Protestantism in the Netherlands. O brethren, do not neglect an agency for good such as this. Get this literature into circulation, and watch God win souls, transform character, and shake the world with it.
These printed pages are deathless. You can destroy a book, of course. But while you are destroying it the press can bring a million just like it to life. Rend them, burn them, drown them, curse them, cast them out - still they are raised as from the dead, and go on about their mighty work. One book can start a ripple which widens and widens through the years until it breaks upon the shores of eternity.
How altogether indestructible these printed words seem to be! Indeed, their very mutilation can be their sowing. No weapon formed against them has prospered.7 Isaiah 54:17 No instrument has ever been constructed which can destroy them.
And don't fail, oh, don't fail, I beg of you, to put the stupendous voltage of fervent prayer back of the printed page. Doors may be locked against you, against the preacher, but God can blow this divine thistledown with its precious seed right through locked doors. As you sell these books and magazines to your patrons, putting prayer behind them, they will preach in the factory, in the store, in the home, on the train, in the bus, at the filling station, on the street, in the kitchen, at the school, in the hospital, in the poorhouse, at work, at play - everywhere - at all times, even whispering in the ears of the dying the glorious message of endless life, and bringing many sons to glory, because prayer - that is, God - is behind them. As you go, pray.
I ask you to consider seriously the idea of your entering the literature ministry and making it your lifework. I do this because I am convinced God would have me do it. I believe God wants you in this glorious and satisfying literature ministry. I am convinced that some of you are making a sad mistake, and are grubbing around with small things and missing a calling that would dignify and glorify all life. God's call to a high ministry of lofty service is sounding today. God grant it may penetrate your ears and reach your soul.
I speak to you as a literature evangelist. I know what I am talking about. My first work for God was as a literature evangelist. I began to be a literature evangelist more than half a century ago. This is the title I took more satisfaction in than any other I could claim.
You ask why? Because the literature ministry has done more for me than anything else, and I have accomplished more by it. It has done more for me. Oh, yes, I went to school and studied for the ministry. I got much out of my school training. But my literature ministry training did more for me and prepared me better for the ministry than did my school training. In the classroom I studied books. In the field I sold books. In the college I obtained theory. In the field I got the practice. One was my study. The other was my laboratory. They both helped. I gained much from both, but I gained most from the colporteur field. If I were asked to choose between them, as to which was most valuable, I would choose the actual experience in the field of literature ministry.
So it is as a literature evangelist that I speak to you, and as a literature evangelist I counsel you to get into the literature ministry. There is no better work than this. There is no loftier ministry than this. There is no more satisfying field of service than this. There is nothing that provides a better training. There is nothing that develops the finest qualifications. There is nothing that gives a broader education.
I think it is a pity that any citizen of Heaven should ever be without work when God has given us such a thing as the literature ministry. I think it is unfortunate that a citizen of Heaven who can sell anything is not selling books. There are people who sell real estate, automobiles, insurance, brushes, soap, stocks, bonds, and many other things. I do not condemn them. I only think that perhaps they could be in better business, higher business, nobler business - God's business.
My experience and observation over a third of a century have convinced me that any man or woman, boy or girl, who, responding to the call of God to go into the literature ministry, will prayerfully and faithfully and unfailingly put in forty hours every week, eight hours for five days a week, is bound to make a success in the literature ministry. It has all the inevitability of a law of nature.
The call of God to you is in your hands. The Spirit of God has impressed it upon your heart. The call is urgent. The work of God is closing. This is your time, and there is very little of it left.
"Guide me to those who need my help,
Teach me to see their need,
That I may speak the word that cheers,
And do the kindly deed.
And if the work Thou shalt appoint
Is what the world counts small,
Make me contented in my lot
And faithful in it all."
Have you ever wanted to do the will of God, but you were not sure which direction to go? You didn't know whether to turn left or turn right. Yet sometimes God works miracles. He does things that you didn't plan and He directs your life.
One day my wife and I took our daily hike of about 3 miles along the wooded countryside. While we were gone, a family had seen the Embassy of Heaven Church sign, parked their car on the side of the road and hiked down the canyon to the Church building. They saw all the vehicles had "Heaven" registration plates and met some people at the Embassy who said they were in Heaven. As they hiked back out to the road, we met them as we were returning from our hike. I greeted them in the name of Jesus Christ. They said, "You'll never guess where we've been. We've been to Heaven!" And they literally meant it, they fully believed they had visited Heaven. They were impressed with a Church that was truly representing Heaven. We exchanged words, talked about our beliefs and then they went back into the world to do their business.
The following week they sent us some tracts and a magazine. A few weeks later they sent more literature including a small pamphlet on scattering divine thistledown. After we read this pamphlet, we knew God had spoken. He said, "You're trying to do My work and you are not going anywhere. I want you in the literature ministry. I want you to print the Word of God so that other people can receive It. I want you to publish the Word and call others to spread My Word. Go out and evangelize."
Here was a family out on a walk who seized the opportunity to give us a bit of leaven, and a little leaven leavens the whole loaf. They passed the Word on to us and now we are passing It on to you.