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Testimonies for the Church Volume 3
God has opened ways in which covetousness can be overcome—by
performing benevolent deeds. By your life you are saying that you
esteem the treasures of the world more highly than immortal riches.
You are saying: “Farewell, heaven; farewell, immortal life; I have
chosen this world.” You are bartering away the pearl of great price for
present gain. While thus admonished of God, while in His providence
He has, as it were, already placed your feet in the dark river, will you,
dare you, cultivate your money-loving propensities? Will you, as the
last act of a misspent life, overreach and retain that which is another’s
just due? Will you reason yourself into the belief that you are doing
justice to your brother? Will you add another act of scheming and
overreaching to those already written against you in the records above?
Shall the blow of God’s retributive judgment fall upon you and you be
called without warning to pass through the dark waters?
Our Saviour frequently and earnestly rebuked the sin of covetous-
ness. “And He said unto them, Take heed, and beware of covetousness:
for a man’s life consisteth not in the abundance of the things which he
possesseth. And He spake a parable unto them, saying, The ground
of a certain rich man brought forth plentifully: and he thought within
himself, saying, What shall I do, because I have no room where to
bestow my fruits? And he said, This will I do: I will pull down my
barns, and build greater; and there will I bestow all my fruits and my
goods. And I will say to my soul, Soul, thou hast much goods laid up
for many years; take thine ease, eat, drink, and be merry. But God said
unto him, Thou fool, this night thy soul shall be required of thee: then
whose shall those things be, which thou hast provided? So is he that
layeth up treasure for himself, and is not rich toward God.”
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God has made a law for His people that a tenth of all the increase
shall be His. I have given you, says God, nine tenths; I ask one tenth of
all the increase. That one tenth the rich man had withheld from God. If
he had not done this, if he had loved God supremely instead of loving
and serving himself, he would not have accumulated so great treasures
that there would be lack of room to bestow them. Had he bestowed his
goods upon his needy brethren to supply their necessities, there would
have been no need of tearing down and building greater barns. But he
had disregarded the principles of the law of God. He had not loved the
Lord with all his heart and his neighbor as himself. Had he used his