This sermon wonderfully portrays the church as God sees it, and makes a strong call for believers to become living stones in that structure.
(Key Excerpts)
Mrs. E. G. White
The church on earth is God’s temple, and it is to assume divine proportions before the world. It is to be composed of living stones laid close together, stone fitting to stone, making a solid building. All these stones are not of the same shape or dimension. Some are large, and some are small, but each one has its own place to fill. In the whole building there is not to be one misshapen stone. Each one is perfect. each stone is a living stone, a stone that emits light. The value of the stones is determined by the light they reflect to the world.— {RH December 4, 1900, par. 1}
Now is the time for the stones to be taken from the quarry of the world and brought into God’s workshop, to be hewed, squared, and polished, that they may shine.— {RH December 4, 1900, par. 2}
His church is the court of holy life, filled with varied gifts and endowed with the Holy Spirit. The church of Christ, enfeebled and defective as she may appear, is the one object on earth on which he bestows in a special sense his love and regard. The church is the theater of his grace, in which he delights to make experiments of mercy on human hearts. {RH December 4, 1900, par. 4}
The church is God’s fortress, his city of refuge, which he holds in a revolted world. {RH December 4, 1900, par. 5}
Christ would have a church that labors to separate the evil from the good, whose members will not willingly tolerate wrong-doing, but will expel it from the heart and life. {RH December 4, 1900, par. 6}
He calls upon them to purge themselves from that which has been revealed as the bane of the churches—an exalting of the men placed in positions of trust.— {RH December 4, 1900, par. 8}
Truth held in unrighteousness is the greatest curse that can come to our world.— {RH December 4, 1900, par. 10}