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Elevate the Standard
351
No misfortune is so great as to become the worshiper of a false
god. No man is in such miserable darkness as he who has lost his
way to heaven. It seems that an infatuation is upon him, for he has a
false god. To turn this worship of the human, fallen, corrupt beings
of earth to the only true object of worship seems a hopeless task.
There are in our time continual repetitions of Belshazzar’s feast
and Belshazzar’s worship; and Belshazzar’s sin is repeated when
the heart, which God requires to be given to Him in pure and holy
devotion, is turned away from Him to worship a human being, and
the lips are made to utter words of praise and adoration which belong
alone to the Lord God of heaven. When the affections God claims
to cluster about Him are made to center upon earthly objects,—a
woman, a man, or any earthly things,—God is superseded by the
object which enchains the senses and affections, and the powers
which were solemnly dedicated to God are bestowed upon a human
being who is defiled with sin. Men and women who once bore the
image of God, but are lost by disobedience and sin, He means to
restore again through their becoming partakers of the divine nature,
having escaped the corruption which is in the world through lust.
And when men and women devote their God-given powers to unholy
purposes, to minister to lust, God is dishonored, and the actors are
ruined.
When engaged in man-and-woman worship, remember that there
is the same witness present as at the feast of Belshazzar. On that
occasion, when in the very midst of their revelry, when God was
forgotten, when the carnal senses were inflamed, a thrill of terror
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rushed through every soul. The cup that was being praised and
idolized by the king fell from his nerveless hand, and in the language
of the Spirit of God, his “countenance was changed, and his thoughts
troubled him, so that the joints of his loins were loosed, and his knees
smote one against another.” A mysterious, bloodless hand was seen
tracing characters on the wall. These mysterious fingers belonging
to and guided by an unseen power wrote the fully as mysterious
characters, which were unintelligible to the awe-stricken revelers.
A light like the lightning followed the forming of every letter, and
lingered there, making them living characters of awful and terrible
significance to all who looked upon them. “
Mene, mene, tekel,
upharsin
.” Their very ignorance of those letters traced upon the