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Counsels for the Church
The Heavenly Character Must Be Acquired on Earth
Be not deceived. God is not mocked. Nothing but holiness will
prepare you for heaven. It is sincere, experimental piety alone that can
give you a pure, elevated character and enable you to enter into the
presence of God, who dwelleth in light unapproachable. The heavenly
character must be acquired on earth, or it can never be acquired at all.
Then begin at once. Flatter not yourself that a time will come when
you can make an earnest effort easier than now. Every day increases
your distance from God. Prepare for eternity with such zeal as you
have not yet manifested. Educate your mind to love the Bible, to love
the prayer meeting, to love the hour of meditation, and, above all, the
hour when the soul communes with God. Become heavenly-minded if
you would unite with the heavenly choir in the mansions above
Secure God’s Love While You Can
My mind goes back to faithful Abraham, who, in obedience to the
divine command given him in a night vision at Beersheba, pursues
his journey with Isaac by his side. He sees before him the mountain
which God had told him He would signalize as the one upon which he
was to sacrifice.
Isaac is bound by the trembling, loving hands of his pitying father
because God has said it. The son submits to the sacrifice because he
believes in the integrity of his father. But when everything is ready,
when the faith of the father and the submission of the son are fully
tested, the angel of God stays the uplifted hand of Abraham that is
about to slay his son and tells him that it is enough. “Now I know that
thou fearest God, seeing thou hast not withheld thy son, thine only son
from Me.”
Genesis 22:12
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This act of faith in Abraham is recorded for our benefit. It teaches
us the great lesson of confidence in the requirements of God, however
close and cutting they may be; and it teaches children perfect submis-
sion to their parents and to God. By Abraham’s obedience we are
taught that nothing is too precious for us to give to God.
God gave His Son to a life of humiliation, self-denial, poverty, toil,
reproach, and to the agonizing death of crucifixion. But there was
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Testimonies for the Church 2:267, 268