The Great Controversy The Great Controversy | Page 380
and estrangement 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
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