Guarding Against Iniquity Among Us
ACCORDING to the Scripture the last days are to be days of abounding iniquity, and “because iniquity shall abound, the love of many shall wax cold.” There is much said to-day about the iniquity that abounds in the world, and about the worldliness that has come into the churches. But this is not the iniquity that most concerns us and that we need to be most on our guard against. It is the iniquity that comes nearest us that is most apt to cause us spiritual injury. It is when we discover iniquity in some one we have had confidence in as a spiritual leader and teacher of the people, some one with whom we have been perhaps associated, and to whom we ourselves have looked, that our moral nature receives the severest shock, and the temptation comes to us to doubt that which before we held in unquestioning confidence. Such experiences have come to many among Seventh-day Adventists, and in many cases the cooling of their love for the truth has been the result, followed soon by its entire extinction. We must be prepared in these days for the disclosure of iniquity where we least expect it. If we make any man our pattern and our guide, we shall sooner or later meet with an experience that will test the foundation on which we are standing. We must be sure that we are not depending on any human leader even unconsciously to ourselves. No one will ever lose his love and separate from the truth while he is looking wholly to Jesus as the author and finisher of his faith. He shall behold no unrighteousness, no hypocrisy, no inconsistency there. No one will be safe who holds the truth without holding Jesus as the truth. He is the way, the truth, and the life. Salvation can come to us only as followers of him.