The Great Controversy The Great Controversy | Page 388
Says Howard Crosby: “It is a matter of deep concern that we find
Christ’s church so little fulfilling the designs of its Lord. Just as the
ancient Jews let a familiar intercourse with the idolatrous nations steal
away their hearts from God, ... so the church of Jesus now is, by its false
partnerships with an unbelieving world, giving up the divine methods of
its true life, and yielding itself to the pernicious, though often plausible,
habits of a Christless society, using the arguments and reaching the
conclusions which are foreign to the revelation of God, and directly
antagonistic to all growth in grace.”—The Healthy Christian: An Appeal
to the Church, pages 141, 142.
In this tide of worldliness and pleasure seeking, self-denial and
self-sacrifice for Christ’s sake are almost wholly lost. “Some of the
men and women now in active life in our churches were educated, when
children, to make sacrifices in order to be able to give or do something
for Christ.” But “if funds are wanted now, ... nobody must be called on
to give. Oh, no! have a fair, tableau, mock trial, antiquarian supper, or
something to eat—anything to amuse the people.”
Governor Washburn of Wisconsin in his annual message, January 9,
1873, declared: “Some law seems to be required to break up the schools
where gamblers are made. These are everywhere. Even the church
(unwittingly, no doubt) is sometimes found doing the work of the devil.
Gift concerts, gift enterprises and raffles, sometimes in aid of religious
or charitable objects, but often for less worthy purposes, lotteries, prize
packages, etc., are all devices to obtain money without value received.
Nothing is so demoralizing or intoxicating, particularly to the young, as
the acquisition of money or property without labor. Respectable people
engaging in these chance enterprises, and easing their consciences with
the reflection that the money is to go to a good object, it is not strange
that the youth of the state should so often fall into the habits which the
excitement of games of hazard is almost certain to engender.”
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