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Accountability for Light Received
617
The example of ministers especially should be circumspect in
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this respect. Upon the Sabbath they should conscientiously restrict
themselves to conversation upon religious themes—to present truth,
present duty, the Christian’s hopes and fears, trials, conflicts, and
afflictions; to overcoming at last, and the reward to be received.
Ministers of Jesus should stand as reprovers to those who fail
to remember the Sabbath to keep it holy. They should kindly and
solemnly reprove those who engage in worldly conversation upon
the Sabbath and at the same time claim to be Sabbathkeepers. They
should encourage devotion to God upon His holy day.
None should feel at liberty to spend sanctified time in an un-
profitable manner. It is displeasing to God for Sabbathkeepers to
sleep during much of the Sabbath. They dishonor their Creator in so
doing, and, by their example, say that the six days are too precious
for them to spend in resting. They must make money, although it
be by robbing themselves of needed sleep, which they make up by
sleeping away holy time. They then excuse themselves by saying:
“The Sabbath was given for a day of rest. I will not deprive myself of
rest to attend meeting, for I need rest.” Such make a wrong use of the
sanctified day. They should, upon that day especially, interest their
families in its observance and assemble at the house of prayer with
the few or with the many, as the case may be. They should devote
their time and energies to spiritual exercises, that the divine influence
resting upon the Sabbath may attend them through the week. Of all
the days in the week, none are so favorable for devotional thoughts
and feelings as the Sabbath.
All heaven was represented to me as beholding and watching
upon the Sabbath those who acknowledge the claims of the fourth
commandment and are observing the Sabbath. Angels were marking
their interest in, and high regard for, this divine institution. Those
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who sanctified the Lord God in their hearts by a strictly devotional
frame of mind, and who sought to improve the sacred hours in
keeping the Sabbath to the best of their ability, and to honor God
by calling the Sabbath a delight—these the angels were specially
blessing with light and health, and special strength was given them.
But, on the other hand, the angels were turning from those who
failed to appreciate the sacredness of God’s sanctified day, and
were removing from them their light and their strength. I saw them