The Great Controversy The Great Controversy | Page 475
appetite or passion, enfeeble or defile the offering which they present to
their heavenly Father.
Peter says: “Abstain from fleshly lusts, which war against the
soul.” 1 Peter 2:11. Every sinful gratification tends to benumb the
faculties and deaden the mental and spiritual perceptions, and the
word or the Spirit of God can make but a feeble impression upon the
heart. Paul writes to the Corinthians: “Let us cleanse ourselves from
all filthiness of the flesh and spirit, perfecting holiness in the fear of
God.” 2 Corinthians 7:1. And with the fruits of the Spirit—“love,
joy, peace, long-suffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness”—he
classes “temperance.” Galatians 5:22, 23.
Notwithstanding these inspired declarations, how many professed
Christians are enfeebling their powers in the pursuit of gain or the
worship of fashion; how many are debasing their godlike manhood by
gluttony, by wine drinking, by forbidden pleasure. And the church,
instead of rebuking, too often encourages the evil by appealing to
appetite, to desire for gain or love of pleasure, to replenish her treasury,
which love for Christ is too feeble to supply. Were Jesus to enter
the churches of today and behold the feasting and unholy traffic there
conducted in the name of religion, would He not drive out those
desecrators, as He banished the money-changers from the temple?
The apostle James declares that the wisdom from above is “first
pure.” Had he encountered those who take the precious name of
Jesus upon lips defiled by tobacco, those whose breath and person are
contaminated by its foul odor, and who pollute the air of heaven and
force all about them to inhale the poison—had the apostle come in
contact with a practice so opposed to the purity of the gospel, would
he not have denounced it as “earthly, sensual, devilish”? Slaves of
tobacco, claiming the blessing of entire sanctification, talk of their hope
of heaven; but God’s word plainly declares that “there shall in no wise
enter into it anything that defileth.” Revelation 21:27.
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