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Living Stones for a Heavenly Temple, December 25
All the building fitly framed together groweth unto an holy temple in the
Lord: in whom ye also are builded together for an habitation of God
through the Spirit.
Ephesians 2:21, 22
.
If we do not respond to the light given and render corresponding obedience,
keeping our souls in the love of God, abiding in Christ, that which to us would
become a blessing becomes a curse. It is the deceiver, not the Spirit of truth, that
makes us believe that we cannot become pure and holy, a powerful people separate
from the world, united in love and union with one another through Christ. We need
not expect any other portion than that which was given to our Lord. According to
the heart service given to God will be the enmity of Satan against the followers of
Jesus; and the children of God are more wise and powerful when the wisdom and
influence of the world are arrayed against us than when they are engaged in favor
and fellowship with them....
The Jewish Temple was built of hewn stones, and at great expense of time
and money and labor these stones were cut out of the mountain and fitted for
their places in the building before they were collected together, so that when the
building was completed there was not the sound of an ax or hammer heard in its
upbuilding. The stones which are in God’s sacred temple are not collected from
the mountains of Judea but gathered from the nations, kindreds and tongues and
people. They are not lifeless material that must be prepared with hammer and
chisel, but living stones which emit light. The great cleaver of truth has taken
them from the quarry of the world and placed them under the hand of the great
Master Builder, the Lord of the temple, and He is polishing them in His workshop,
which is this world, that all the rough edges and crookedness may be removed
and they hammered and chiseled and squared by the truth of God, polished and
refined, ready to fill their place in God’s spiritual temple, that they may grow up a
holy temple for God.
Now we are in the workshop of God, and the process is going on in these
hours of probation to fit us for the glorious temple. We cannot now be indifferent
and negligent and careless, and refuse to depart from sin, but we must be dying
to our defects of character and expect to become pure and holy and fashioned
in character after the similitude of a palace. When Christ shall come, it is then
... too late to obtain a holy character. Now is the day of preparation; now is the
time when we can have our defects removed; now is the time when our sins must
go beforehand to judgment, be confessed and repented of and pardon written off
against our names.—
Letter 60, December 25, 1886
, to John Corliss and wife,
pioneer workers in Australia.
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