Chapter 60—Consecration
The people of God will be tested and proved. A close and searching
work must go on among Sabbathkeepers. Like ancient Israel, how
soon we forget God and His wondrous works, and rebel against Him.
Some look to the world and desire to follow its fashions and participate
in its pleasure, just as the children of Israel looked back to Egypt and
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lusted for the good things which they had enjoyed there, and which
God chose to withhold from them to prove them and thereby test their
fidelity to Him. He wished to see if His people valued His service, and
the freedom He had so miraculously given them, more highly than the
indulgences they enjoyed in Egypt while in servitude to a tyrannical,
idolatrous people.
All true followers of Jesus will have sacrifices to make. God will
prove them and test the genuineness of their faith. I have been shown
that the true followers of Jesus will discard picnics, donations, shows,
and other gatherings for pleasure. They can find no Jesus there, and no
influence which will make them heavenly minded and increase their
growth in grace. The word of God obeyed leads us to come out from
all these things and be separate. The things of the world are sought
for, and considered worthy to be admired and enjoyed, by all those
who are not devoted lovers of the cross and spiritual worshipers of a
crucified Jesus.
There is chaff among us, and this is why we are so weak. Some are
constantly leaning to the world. Their views and feelings harmonize
much better with the spirit of the world than with that of Christ’s
self-denying followers. It is perfectly natural for them to prefer the
company of those whose spirit will best agree with their own. And such
have quite too much influence among God’s people. They take part
with them, and have a name among them, and are a text for unbelievers
and the weak and unconsecrated ones in the church. These persons of
two minds will ever have objections to the plain, pointed testimony
which reproves individual wrongs. In this refining time these persons
will either be wholly converted, and sanctified by obeying the truth,
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