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Testimonies for the Church Volume 2
advantage of your sinful course to make you believe that you are
past redemption. You are on Satan’s battlefield engaged in a severe
conflict. The barrier which is thrown around every family circle,
and which makes it sacred, you have broken down. And now Satan
harasses you almost constantly. You are not at rest. You are not
at peace, and you seek to make your brethren responsible for your
conflicting feelings and doubts and jealousies; you feel that they
are at fault, that they do not give you attention. The trouble is with
yourself. You want your own way, and do not rend your heart before
God, and with brokenness and contrition cast yourself all broken,
sinful, and polluted, upon His mercy. Your efforts to save yourself,
if persisted in, will result in your certain ruin.
Cease your jealousies and your faultfinding. Turn your attention
to your own case and by humble repentance, relying alone upon
the blood of Christ, save your own soul. Make thorough work for
eternity. If you turn from the truth you are a ruined man, your family
is ruined. After the fortifications preserving sacred the privacy and
privileges of the family relation have been once broken down, it is
difficult to build them up; but in the strength of God, and in His
strength alone, you can do this. Truth, sacred truth, is your anchor,
which will save you from drifting in the downward current to crime
and destruction.
A conscience once violated is greatly weakened. It needs the
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strength of constant watchfulness and unceasing prayer. You are
standing in a slippery place. You need all the strength that the truth
can give to fortify you and save you from making entire shipwreck.
Life and death are before you; which will you choose? Had you seen
the necessity of being firmly settled upon principle, not moving from
impulse, and not being easily discouraged, but prepared to endure
hardness, you would not have been overcome as you have been.
You have moved from impulse. You have not, like our faultless
Pattern, been willing to endure the contradiction of sinners against
yourself. We are exhorted to remember Him who endured this, lest
we become weary and faint in our minds. You have been weak as a
child, having no power of endurance. You have not felt the necessity
of being established, strengthened, settled, grounded, and built up in
the faith.