Warning Rejected
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inclinations will finally lose the power to distinguish between truth and
error. The understanding becomes darkened, the conscience callous,
the heart hardened, and the soul is separated from God. Where the
message of divine truth is spurned or slighted, there the church will
be enshrouded in darkness; faith and love grow cold, and estrange-
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ment and dissension enter. Church members center their interests and
energies in worldly pursuits, and sinners become hardened in their
impenitence.
The first angel’s message of
Revelation 14
, announcing the hour of
God’s judgment and calling upon men to fear and worship Him, was
designed to separate the professed people of God from the corrupting
influences of the world and to arouse them to see their true condition
of worldliness and backsliding. In this message, God has sent to the
church a warning, which, had it been accepted, would have corrected
the evils that were shutting them away from Him. Had they received
the message from heaven, humbling their hearts before the Lord and
seeking in sincerity a preparation to stand in His presence, the Spirit
and power of God would have been manifested among them. The
church would again have reached that blessed state of unity, faith, and
love which existed in apostolic days, when the believers “were of one
heart and of one soul,” and “spake the word of God with boldness,”
when “the Lord added to the church daily such as should be saved.”
Acts 4:32, 31
;
2:47
.
If God’s professed people would receive the light as it shines upon
them from His word, they would reach that unity for which Christ
prayed, that which the apostle describes, “the unity of the Spirit in the
bond of peace.” “There is,” he says, “one body, and one Spirit, even
as ye are called in one hope of your calling; one Lord, one faith, one
baptism.”
Ephesians 4:3-5
.
Such were the blessed results experienced by those who accepted
the advent message. They came from different denominations, and
their denominational barriers were hurled to the ground; conflicting
creeds were shivered to atoms; the unscriptural hope of a temporal
millennium was abandoned, false views of the second advent were
corrected, pride and conformity to the world were swept away; wrongs
were made right; hearts were united in the sweetest fellowship, and
love and joy reigned supreme. If this doctrine did this for the few who
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did receive it, it would have done the same for all if all had received it.