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Testimonies for the Church Volume 3
loosen your grasp of earthly possessions and fasten your affections
upon God. You must be a converted man. Agonize with God. Do not
be content to perish forever, but make an effort for salvation before it
shall be everlastingly too late.
It is not now too late for wrongs to be righted. Show your re-
pentance for past wrongs by redeeming the time. Where you have
wronged anyone, make restitution as it comes to your mind. This is
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your only hope of the pardoning love of God. It will be like taking out
the right eye or cutting off the right arm, but there is no other way for
you. You have made efforts repeatedly, but have failed because you
have loved money, some of which has not been very honestly gained.
You would not try to redeem the past by restitution. When you begin
to do this, there will be hope for you. If during the few remaining days
of your life you choose to go on as you have done, your case will be
hopeless; you will lose both worlds; you will see the saints of God
glorified in the heavenly city and yourself thrust out; you will have no
part in that precious life which was purchased for you at an infinite
cost, but which you valued so little as to sell it for earthly riches.
Now there is a little time left you. Will you work? Will you repent?
Or will you die all unready, worshiping money, glorying in your riches,
and forgetting God and heaven? No faint struggle or feeble efforts will
wean your affections from the world. Jesus will help you. In every
earnest effort you make, He will be near you and bless your endeavors.
You must make earnest efforts or you will be lost. I warn you not to
delay one moment, but commence just now. You have long disgraced
the Christian name by your covetousness and small dealing. Now you
may honor it by working in an opposite direction and by letting all see
that there is a power in the truth of God to transform human nature.
You may, in the strength of God, save your soul if you will.
You have a work to do which you should begin at once. Satan
will stand by your side, as he did by the side of Christ in the wilder-
ness of temptation, to overcome you with reasonings, to pervert your
judgment, and to paralyze your sense of right and equity. If you do
justice in one instance, you must not wait for Satan to overpower your
good impulses by his reasoning. You have so long been controlled
by selfishness and covetousness that you cannot trust yourself. I do
not want you to lose heaven. I have been shown the selfish acts of
your life, your close scheming and figuring, your bartering, and the
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