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Testimonies for the Church Volume 2
by works. Faith without works is dead, being alone. Those who
profess great faith, yet have not works, will not be saved by their
faith. Satan believes the truth and trembles, yet this kind of faith
possesses no virtue. Many who have made a high profession of faith
are deficient in good works. If they should show their faith by their
works they could exert a powerful influence on the side of truth. But
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they do not improve upon the talents of means lent them of God.
Those who think to ease their consciences by willing their property
to their children, or by withholding from God’s cause and suffering
it to pass into the hands of unbelieving, reckless children for them to
squander or hoard up and worship, will have to render an account to
God; they are unfaithful stewards of their Lord’s money. They allow
Satan to outgeneral them through these children, whose minds are
under his control. Satan’s purposes are accomplished in many ways,
while the stewards of God seem stupefied and paralyzed; they do
not realize their great responsibility and the reckoning which must
shortly come.
Those who have property and whose minds are darkened by the
God of this world seem to be controlled by Satan in the disposal
of it. If they have true, believing children, and also children whose
affections are wholly upon the things of the world, in making a
transfer of their means to their children, they generally give a larger
amount to those children who do not love God, and who are serving
the enemy of all righteousness, than to those who are serving God.
They place in the hands of the unfaithful children the very things
that will prove a snare to them and that will be obstacles in the way
of their making a surrender to God. While they make large presents
to the unbelieving children they make very stinted gifts to those
who are of the same faith with themselves. This very fact should
startle the men of means who have pursued this course. They should
see that the deceitfulness of riches has perverted their judgment.
If they could see the influence operating upon their minds they
would understand that Satan had these matters very much according
to his own purposes and plans. Instead of God’s controlling the
mind and sanctifying the judgment, it is controlled by exactly the
opposite power. The ones who have been with them in the faith they
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sometimes even neglect, and are frequently very close and exacting
in all their deal with them; while they have an open hand to the