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Spiritual Gifts, Volume 4a
depraved appetite destroys the fine feelings of the soul, and so affects
the reasoning faculties which God has given to man, that spiritual and
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holy things lose their sacredness. Disobedience looks pleasing, instead
of exceeding sinful. Satan rejoices to see men, formed in the image
of his Maker, yield themselves as slaves to a depraved appetite, for
he can then successfully control the faculties of the mind, and lead
those who are intemperate to act in a manner to debase themselves and
dishonor God, by losing the high sense of his sacred requirements. It
was the indulgence of the appetite which caused the sons of Aaron to
use common instead of sacred fire for their offerings.
The sons of Aaron departing from God’s commands represents
those who transgress the fourth commandment of Jehovah, which is
very plain—“Six days shalt thou labor, and do all thy work; but the
seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord thy God: in it thou shalt not
do any work,” &c. Nearly all the professed followers of Christ do not
keep the day God has sanctified and required them to keep sacred, to
rest upon it because he has rested upon it himself. They labor upon
God’s holy time, and honor the first day of the week by resting upon
it, which is a common working day, a day upon which God did not
rest, and upon which he has placed no sacred honor.
A departure from the fourth commandment will not now be vis-
ited immediately with temporal death. Yet God does not regard the
violation of his commandments any more lightly than he did the trans-
gression of Aaron’s sons. Death is the final punishment of all who
reject light, and continue in transgression. When God says, Keep holy
the seventh day, he does not mean the sixth, nor the first, but the very
day he has specified. If men substitute a common day for the sacred,
and say that will do just as well, they insult the Maker of the heavens
and of the earth, who made the Sabbath to commemorate his resting
upon the seventh day, after creating the world in six days. It is dan-
gerous business in the service of God to deviate from his institutions.
Those who have to do with God, who is infinite, who explicitly directs
in regard to his own worship, should follow the exact course he has
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prescribed, and not feel at liberty to deviate in the smallest respect,
because they think it will answer just as well. God will teach all his
creatures that he means just what he says.
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