Vital Function of God’s Laws
155
Even religious teachers have failed to present the holy standard by
which character is measured, because they have ceased to respect every
one of the precepts that God has given, which are holy, and just, and
good. Men have taken upon themselves the responsibility of erecting
a standard in harmony with their own ideas, and the law of Jehovah
has been dishonored. This is why there is so great and widespread
iniquity. This is why our days are becoming like the days of Noah and
Lot.—
The Review and Herald, May 2, 1893
.
Connection Between God’s Moral Law and Laws of the Phys-
ical World—There is a close relation between the moral law and the
laws that God had established in the physical world. If men would be
obedient to the law of God, carrying out in their lives the principles of
its ten precepts, the principles of righteousness that it teaches would
be a safeguard against wrong habits. But as through the indulgence of
perverted appetite they have declined in virtue, so they have become
weakened through their own immoral practices and their violation of
physical laws.
The suffering and anguish that we see everywhere, the deformity,
decrepitude, disease, and imbecility now flooding the world, make it a
lazar house in comparison with what it might be even now, if God’s
moral law and the law which He has implanted in our being were
obeyed. By his own persistent violation of these laws, man has greatly
aggravated the evils resulting from the transgression in Eden.—
The
Review and Herald, February 11, 1902
.
Law of Divine Administration—The Christian is to be a bene-
fit to others. Thus he himself is benefited. “He that watereth shall
[568]
be watered also himself” (
Proverbs 11:25
). This is a law of the di-
vine administration, a law by which God designs that the streams of
beneficence shall be kept, like the waters of the great deep, in con-
stant circulation, perpetually returning to their source. In the fulfilling
of this law is the power of Christian missions.—
Testimonies for the
Church 7:170
(1902).
Laws Governing Physical Being—In the providence of God, the
laws that govern our physical being, with the penalties for their viola-
tion, have been made so clear that intelligent beings can understand
them, and all are under the most solemn obligation to study this sub-
ject and to live in harmony with natural law. Health principles must