Chapter 343—Preparing to Live With Angels
I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye
present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which
is your reasonable service.
Romans 12:1
.
We have no doubt ... that the doctrines we hold today are present truth,
and that we are nearing the judgment. We are preparing to meet Him who,
escorted by a retinue of holy angels, is to appear in the clouds of heaven to
give the faithful and the just the finishing touch of immortality....
We embrace the truth of God with our different faculties, and as we come
under the influence of that truth, it will accomplish the work for us which
is necessary to give us a moral fitness for the kingdom of glory and for the
society of the heavenly angels. We are now in God’s workshop. Many of us
are rough stones from the quarry. But as we lay hold upon the truth of God,
its influence affects us. It elevates us and removes from us every imperfection
and sin, of whatever nature. Thus we are prepared to see the King in His
beauty and finally to unite with the pure and heavenly angels in the kingdom
of glory. It is here that this work is to be accomplished for us, here that our
bodies and spirits are to be fitted for immortality.
We are in a world that is opposed to righteousness and purity of character,
and to a growth in grace. Wherever we look we see corruption and defilement,
deformity and sin. And what is the work that we are to undertake here just
previous to receiving immortality? It is to preserve our bodies holy, our
spirits pure, that we may stand forth unstained amid the corruptions teeming
around us in these last days.
The light shines clearly, and none need be ignorant, for the great God
Himself is man’s instructor.... He designs that the great subject of health
reform shall be agitated and the public mind deeply stirred to investigate; for
it is impossible for men and women, with all their sinful, healthful-destroying,
brain-enervating habits, to discern sacred truth, through which they are to be
sanctified, refined, elevated, and made fit for the society of heavenly angels
in the kingdom of glory.
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