Warning Against Skepticism
81
class, or listen to their words of sarcasm and sophistry. Unless our
young people have moral courage to sever their connection with these
persons when they discover their unbelief, they will be ensnared, and
will think and talk as do their associates, speaking lightly of religion
and the faith of the Bible.
Self-Confidence and Blindness
Could the eyes of deluded youth be opened, they would see the
exultant leer of Satan at his success in ruining souls. In every conceiv-
able way he seeks to adapt his temptations to the various dispositions
and circumstances of those whom he wishes to entangle. He will
try every device, and if the subjects of these temptations do not seek
God, they will be blinded to his deceptions, and will be self-confident,
self-sufficient, and in ignorance of their condition and danger. They
will soon come to despise the faith once delivered to the saints.
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I speak to the youth as one who knows, as one to whom the Lord
has opened the perils that attend their pathway. Self-confidence will
lead you into the snare of the enemy. The youth do not ask counsel of
God, and make Him their refuge and strength. They enter society with
all assurance, confident that they are fully able to choose the right and
to comprehend divine mysteries, because of their powers of reason, as
though they could discover truth for themselves.
We fear more for those who are self-confident than for any others,
for they will surely be entangled in the net that has been set by the great
adversary of God and man. Some associate who has been chosen as a
familiar friend, who has been tainted with the corruption of doubt, will
instill his leaven of unbelief into the minds of this class. By fulsome
flattery of their talent, their intellectual superiority, by inciting in them
an ambition for high position, their attention will be gained, and moral
blight will fall upon them. Those who are exalted in their own opinions
will despise the blood of the Atoning Sacrifice, and will do despite to
the Spirit of grace.
The children of Sabbath-keeping parents, who have had great light,
who have been the objects of the tenderest solicitude, may be the ones
who will leave a heritage of shame, who will sow to the wind and reap
the whirlwind. In the judgment the names of those who have sinned
against great light will be written with those who are condemned to