Basic HTML Version
390
Testimonies for the Church Volume 2
active labor, toil, and unceasing vigilance alone which will satisfy
these unreasonable, hard-to-be-suited watchmen. Why don’t they
prophesy smooth things, and cry: Peace, peace? Then everything
would move on smoothly.”
These are the true feelings of many of our people. And Satan
exults at his success in controlling the minds of so many who profess
to be Christians. He has deceived them, benumbed their sensibilities,
and planted his hellish banner right in their midst, and they are so
completely deceived that they know not that it is he. The people have
not erected graven images, yet their sin is no less in the sight of God.
They worship mammon. They love worldly gain. Some will make
any sacrifice of conscience to obtain their object. God’s professed
[441]
people are selfish and self-caring. They love the things of this world,
and have fellowship with the works of darkness. They have pleasure
in unrighteousness. They have not love toward God nor love for
their neighbors. They are idolaters, and are worse, far worse, in the
sight of God than the heathen, graven-image worshipers who have
no knowledge of a better way.
Christ’s followers are required to come out from the world, and
be separate, and touch not the unclean, and they have the promise
of being the sons and daughters of the Most High, members of the
royal family. But if the conditions are not complied with on their
part, they will not, cannot, realize the fulfillment of the promise.
A profession of Christianity is nothing in the sight of God; but
true, humble, willing obedience to His requirements designates the
children of His adoption, the recipients of His grace, the partakers
of His great salvation. Such will be peculiar, a spectacle unto the
world, to angels, and to men. Their peculiar, holy character will be
discernible, and will distinctly separate them from the world, from
its affections and lust.
I saw that but few among us answer to this description. Their
love to God is in word, not in deed and in truth. Their course of
action, their works, testify of them that they are not children of the
light but of darkness. Their works have not been wrought in God,
but in selfishness, in unrighteousness. Their hearts are strangers to
His renewing grace. They have not experienced the transforming
power which leads them to walk even as Christ walked. Those who
are living branches of the heavenly Vine will partake of the sap and