Chapter 3—Obedience to the Law of God
Mercy and truth are promised to the humble and penitent, and
judgments are prepared for the sinful and rebellious. “Justice and
judgment are the habitation of Thy throne.”
Psalm 89:14
. A wicked
and adulterous people will not escape the wrath of God, the punishment
they have justly earned. Man has fallen, and his is a work of a lifetime,
be it longer or shorter, to recover from his fall, and regain, through
Christ, the image of the divine, which he has lost by sin and continued
transgression. God requires a thorough transformation of soul, body,
and spirit, in order to regain the estate lost through Adam. The Lord
mercifully sends rays of light to show man his true condition. If he
will not walk in the light, he manifests a pleasure in darkness. He will
not come to the light lest his deeds should be reproved.
The nominal churches of this day are filled with fornication and
adultery, the result of base, lustful passion, but these things, to a great
extent, are kept covered. Ministers, in high places, are guilty, yet a
cloak of godliness covers their dark deeds, and they pass on from year
to year in their course of hypocrisy. Their sins have reached unto
Heaven.
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Fornication and adultery are estimated by many professing Chris-
tians as sins which God winketh at. These sins are practiced to a great
extent. They do not acknowledge the claims of God’s law upon them.
They have broken the commandments of the great Jehovah, and are
zealously teaching their hearers to do the same, declaring that the
law of God is abolished, and consequently has no claims upon them.
In accordance with this free state of things, sin does not appear so
exceedingly sinful; for by the law is the knowledge of sin, We may
expect to find men among those who thus teach, who will deceive, and
lie, and give loose rein to lustful passions. But men and women who
acknowledge the ten commandments binding, should carry out in their
lives, the principles of all ten of the precepts given in awful grandeur
from Sinai.
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