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Testimonies for the Church Volume 1
them. They can sit and listen to the story of the cross, hear how the
cruel nails were driven through the hands and feet of the Son of God,
and it does not stir the depths of the soul.
Said the angel: “If such should be ushered into the city of God, and
told that all its rich beauty and glory was theirs to enjoy eternally, they
would have no sense of how dearly that inheritance was purchased for
them. They would never realize the matchless depths of a Saviour’s
love. They have not drunk of the cup, nor been baptized with the
baptism. Heaven would be marred if such should dwell there. Those
only who have partaken of the sufferings of the Son of God, and have
come up through great tribulation, and have washed their robes and
made them white in the blood of the Lamb, can enjoy the indescribable
glory and unsurpassed beauty of heaven.”
The want of this necessary preparation will shut out the greater
portion of young professors, for they will not labor earnestly and
zealously enough to obtain that rest that remains for the people of God.
They will not honestly confess their sins, that they may be pardoned
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and blotted out. These sins in a short time will be revealed in just their
enormity. God’s eye does not slumber. He knows every sin that is
hidden from mortal eye. The guilty know just what sins to confess
that their souls may be clean before God. Jesus is now giving them
opportunity to confess, to repent in deep humility, and purify their
lives by obeying and living out the truth. Now is the time for wrongs
to be righted and sins to be confessed, or they will appear before the
sinner in the day of God’s wrath.
Parents generally put too much confidence in their children; for
often when the parents are confiding in them, they are in concealed
iniquity. Parents, watch your children with a jealous care. Exhort,
reprove, counsel them when you rise up and when you sit down, when
you go out and when you come in, line upon line, precept upon precept,
here a little, and there a little. Subdue your children when they are
young. With many parents this is sadly neglected. They do not take
as firm and decided a stand as they should in regard to their children.
They suffer them to be like the world, to love dress, and associate
with those who hate the truth and whose influence is poisonous. By so
doing they encourage in their children a worldly disposition.
I saw that there should always be a fixed principle with Christian
parents to be united in the government of their children. There is a