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Testimonies for the Church Volume 3
know how to live so that his powers of body and mind may be exercised
to the glory of God.
It is impossible for man to present his body a living sacrifice, holy,
and acceptable to God, while, because it is customary for the world to
do so, he is indulging in habits that are lessening physical, mental, and
moral vigor. The apostle adds: “And be not conformed to this world:
but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove
what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of God.” Jesus,
seated upon the Mount of Olives, gave instruction to His disciples
concerning the signs which should precede His coming. He said: “But
as the days of Noah were, so shall also the coming of the Son of man
be. For as in the days that were before the Flood they were eating and
drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day that Noah
entered into the ark, and knew not until the Flood came, and took them
all away; so shall also the coming of the Son of man be.”
The same sins exist in our day which brought the wrath of God
upon the world in the days of Noah. Men and women now carry their
eating and drinking to gluttony and drunkenness. This prevailing sin,
the indulgence of perverted appetite, inflamed the passions of men in
the days of Noah and led to general corruption, until their violence
and crimes reached to heaven, and God washed the earth of its moral
pollution by a flood.
The same sins of gluttony and drunkenness benumbed the moral
sensibilities of the inhabitants of Sodom so that crimes seemed to be
the delight of the men and women of that wicked city. Christ thus
warns the world: “Likewise also as it was in the days of Lot; they did
eat, they drank, they bought, they sold, they planted, they builded; but
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the same day that Lot went out of Sodom it rained fire and brimstone
from heaven, and destroyed them all. Even thus shall it be in the day
when the Son of man is revealed.”
Christ has here left us a most important lesson. He does not in
His teaching encourage indolence. His example was the opposite of
this. Christ was an earnest worker. His life was one of self-denial,
diligence, perseverance, industry, and economy. He would lay before
us the danger of making eating and drinking paramount. He reveals
the result of giving up to indulgence of appetite. The moral powers
are enfeebled so that sin does not appear sinful. Crimes are winked at,
and base passions control the mind until general corruption roots out