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Selected Messages Book 1
The knowledge which God did not want our first parents to have
was a knowledge of guilt. And when they accepted the assertions of
Satan, which were false, disobedience and transgression were intro-
duced into our world. This disobedience to God’s express command,
this belief of Satan’s lie, opened the floodgates of woe upon the world.
Satan has continued the work begun in the Garden of Eden. He has
worked vigilantly, that man might accept his assertions as proof against
God. He has worked against Christ in His efforts to restore the image
of God in man, and imprint in his soul the similitude of God.
The belief of a falsehood did not make Paul a kind, tender, com-
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passionate man. He was a religious zealot, exceedingly mad against
the truth concerning Jesus. He went through the country, haling men
and women, and committing them to prison. Speaking of this, he says:
“I am verily a man which am a Jew, born in Tarsus, a city in Cilicia,
yet brought up in this city at the feet of Gamaliel, and taught according
to the perfect manner of the law of the fathers, and was zealous toward
God, as ye all are this day. And I persecuted this way unto the death,
binding and delivering into prisons both men and women” (
Acts 22:3,
4
).
The human family are in trouble because of their transgression of
the Father’s law. But God does not leave the sinner until He shows the
remedy for sin. The only-begotten Son of God has died that we might
live. The Lord has accepted this sacrifice in our behalf, as our substitute
and surety, on the condition that we receive Christ and believe on Him.
The sinner must come in faith to Christ, take hold of His merits, lay
his sins upon the Sin Bearer, and receive His pardon. It was for this
cause that Christ came into the world. Thus the righteousness of Christ
is imputed to the repenting, believing sinner. He becomes a member
of the royal family, a child of the heavenly King, an heir of God, and
joint heir with Christ.
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