MARRYING UNBELIEVERS by James Sawyer

The Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Jun 4, 1867

MARRYING UNBELIEVERS.

By James Sawyer

Of all the denunciations which God has pronounced against man for sin, but few are more striking and pungent than those which forbid the marriage of his people with unbelievers. It seems that this was one great cause of the corruption in the earth before the flood. We learn that the sons of God (the descendants of Seth,) mingled with the posterity of Cain, and by intermarrying with them, lost their holy character through the influence of their wives. The earth soon became corrupt; every imagination of the heart of man was evil. It repented the Lord that he had made him, and he cleansed the earth of its impurity by a terrible deluge.

The unhallowed longing of Lot’s wife for the goods and pleasures of the ungodly cities of the plain, which she had been summoned to leave, called down the vengeance of Jehovah, and that wonderful judgment ought to be a lesson to all future generations to forsake the company of evil-doers. But experience seems to be the only lesson by which we learn, unless we are early taught to obey the commands of God. Deut. vii, 3, 4. With the seven nations mightier and greater than the Jewish, God said that his people should not make marriages. “Thou shalt not give thy daughter unto his son, nor take his daughter unto thy son; for they will turn away thy son from following me; so will the anger of the Lord be kindled against you.” Josh. xxiii, 12. “If ye do in any wise go back and cleave unto the remnant of these nations, and shall make marriages with them, know of a certainty that the Lord your God will no more drive out any of these nations from before you; but they shall be snares and traps unto you, and scourges in your sides, and thorns in your eyes.”

Was not this intermarrying with other nations one reason why the Lord suffered them to go into Egypt? Spir. gifts, Vol. iii, p. 242. Four hundred years of cruel bondage! How much bitter for a little sweet! Then in the wilderness it was the mixed multitude, those who had intermarried with the Egyptians, who were the instigators in one of the greatest of the rebellions that happened in the camp of Israel. Spir. Gifts, Vol. iii, p. 274.

One of the principal reasons why the people of God could not go up to Jerusalem to build up the walls of the city and the holy temple, was their strange wives, and nothing was accomplished in the great work until this evil was forsaken.

The strength of the mighty and the wisdom of the wisest, may not be able to shield us when we transgress this great command not to marry unbelievers. Samson fell a victim to the same by disobeying it, and Solomon in his old age had his heart turned from the Lord and did evil because of a like neglect. “Be ye not unequally yoked with unbelievers,” says Paul, “for what part has he that believeth with an infidel? or what concord has Christ with Belial?”

How often has God forsaken his people for this sin! Is there danger that his people in these last days should fall into the same forbidden faith? May God forbid that the Seventh-day Adventists be thus spotted with the world. Why can not both sexes in this society raise the standard of morality, and say, We will not cause a reproach upon the cause of God by forming intimate alliances with those who do not show by their lives that they are trying to keep all the commandments of God? It is their privilege to lead the world, but not be led by the world. And may neither wealth, nor beauty, nor smartness entice either sex; but let PRINCIPLE form our permanent associations, so that we do not cause the anger of the Lord to be kindled against us, but have our last days our best days.

JAMES SAWYER.

Coopersville, Mich.