Disobedience Dangerous.
By S. F. Bollman
“Behold, to obey is better than sacrifice, and to hearken than the fat of rams.” 1 Sam. 15 : 22. AMONGST the numerous lessons taught us in the Bible concerning the danger of disobedience, few are more instructive than the failure of Saul to carry out the Lord’s instructions in regard to the destruction of the Amalekites. God’s judgments and requirements are always righteous and infallible; and men’s, in so far as they vary from divine requirements, are always erring and fallacious. The Lord, through the instrumentality of Saul, designed to visit punishment on the Amalekites as the cup of their iniquity was full. See 1 Sam. 15 : 2. Saul, instead of executing his instructions to the letter, presumed that an approximate obedience would be sufficient; but his departure from specific instructions cost him his kingdom, “Because thou hast rejected the word of the Lord, he hath also rejected thee from being king.” 1 Sam. 15 : 23. A notable instance of the exactness which the Lord requires in services concerning which he has given specific instructions, may be found in Lev. 10 : 1, 2, where Nadab and Abihu, who, although authorized to offer sacrifices and burn incense to the Lord under certain conditions and in a certain way, for not observing the specific requirements, were devoured by fire from the Lord. Another notable instance, showing that exact obedience to the Lord’s requirements is absolutely essential, is found in the 16th chapter of Numbers. There the rebellion of Korah, Dathan, and Abiram, and certain princes, famous men in the congregation, is recorded, with the swift destruction which overtook them for finding fault with Moses and Aaron for obeying the Lord and carrying out in detail all particulars as commanded them. And further, even Moses himself, for hastiness of spirit, and not giving God the glory in the matter of bringing water from the rock at Meribah (Num. 20 : 10–13), was not permitted to go over into the goodly land which he viewed from Pisgah’s top, but “died there in the land of Moab, according to the word of the Lord. And he buried him in a valley in the land of Moab, over against Beth-peor.” Deut. 34 : 5, 6. Compare also Deut. 3 : 26, 27. But not only does the Bible abound with instances of the punishment of individuals for transgressions of his law, but also of nations as well. We mention the captivity of the Jews in Babylon as an instance in point. The particular sin long persevered in, which resulted in their being carried into captivity, was their breaking of the Lord’s Sabbath, and the consequent idolatry which followed from their forgetting that the Lord created the heavens and the earth and all the hosts of them; hence, by the rivers of Babylon, with their harps hung upon the willows, they mourned their lost privileges; and wept when they thought upon Zion. If God, then, in the past, has visited upon his peculiar people severe judgments and sore chastisements because of their transgressions of his laws and violation of his commandments, may we not expect that his requirements will be insisted upon with the same inflexibility to the end? Most assuredly, men may not construct creeds or systems of faith which contradict God’s revealed will or moral law without suffering the penalty which he has attached to a transgression of his commandments, “though hand join in hand the [wicked persons, communities, or denominations] shall not be unpunished.” Prov. 16 : 5. In 2 Thess. 1 : 7, 8 we are assured that the Lord Jesus shall be revealed from Heaven “in flaming fire, taking vengeance on them that know not God and obey not the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ.” It is obedience to what God has revealed and clearly expressed as obligatory upon the children of men, which will be the test in the Judgment. If those were times of ignorance concerning the perpetual obligation to keep the Lord’s Sabbath, those times are surely now past, and the providence of God in the Third Angel’s Message, now going forth and being proclaimed in the world, surely calls upon men to repent of Sabbath breaking and to honor the Lord by keeping the seventh day as the Sabbath, instead of the first which has no divine authority for its observance.