p. 243 | LOVE NOT THE WORLD by James Sawyer

The Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Nov 17, 1868

LOVE NOT THE WORLD.

By James Sawyer

“LOVE not the world, neither the things that are in the world. If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him.” 1 John ii, 15.

Are there those who bear the name of Seventh-day Adventists, deeply in love with the world? Allow me to ask a few questions:

When unbelieving friends call to visit you, do you make extra efforts to please their tastes, and set before them several dishes of which your own conscience forbids you to use freely, and sometimes forbids you to use at all? But, says one, I have friends who often call on me, and who cannot do without their tea, coffee, &c., and would not visit me unless I furnished such articles for the table. Are you not better off without frequent visits from such friends? Do you think of winning your friends to a love of the truth in this way? by pampering their appetites and getting their minds so beclouded that their moral and reasoning faculties cannot act upon the principles of divine truth?

Now it is a conceded point, by all, that when alcohol is in, reason and religion are out; so when stimulants, which arouse the animality of the mind, are in, the conceptions of the beauties and excellences of sacred truth are out; so you may labor to convert your friends in this way, but before you are aware of it, they will have converted you. Would it not be exerting an immoral influence to provide wine that contains alcohol, or gin, for your visitors who are in the habit of using such stimulants, because it pleases their taste? Is not the same principle involved in either case?

Now salt and the saline properties of butter are not very wholesome. When you are aware of this, and highly season your food as such visitors call upon you, thus inducing your own families to partake of such unhealthy food, is this in accordance with your faith?

Do you love to mingle in the society of unbelievers, and now and then make a visit where they talk mostly about this one's faults or that one's calamities, this one's worldly success or that one's failure—cultivating your anxiety about the good things of this world?

Can you often go where you must spend several hours in such company to whom it would be unwelcome to recommend the religion of your Master?

Is the reform dress a dreadful cross to you, and while line upon line, and precept upon precept, have been given on this point, appealing to sisters to consider this matter and act upon it according to light, are you slighting this part of the reform by adopting just enough of it to destroy your influence entirely? How can you avoid paying some attention to this part of the work? Will not the Lord's remnant people seek to win souls to Christ wherever they go? While Jesus is pleading with his Father to spare his people, are you endeavoring to get a victory over your lower propensities of mind, those faculties which induce in you contention, revenge, faultfinding, covetousness, idolatry, &c.?

Forty days were once spent by Jesus fasting in the wilderness to prepare him to withstand the strong temptation of Satan; and do you ever spend even a few hours in preparing to endure temptation when called to mingle in the busy throng, or in the society of those whose tables are loaded with such viands as are calculated to arouse the animal propensities, and cause you to say things which, otherwise, you would not.

Do you think of overcoming easier than the Saviour did? Are you trying to get to Heaven without denying self? While temperance in all things is necessary to win an earthly crown, can you expect to gain an incorruptible one through the gratification of unrestrained, selfish desires? Are you tarrying in the plain? Are you looking behind you? Are you remembering Lot's wife? Are you the inconsiderate ones who are sleeping at their post? Are you living without prayer? What! no prevailing prayer with you at all? Are you drawing sap from the vine, or are you the branches that are almost ready to be broken off?

There is plenty of knowledge and wisdom above. Have you asked for them? Have you sought for them with all your heart? There is plenty of mercy at the mercy-seat. Are you repenting so that the cherubic host may cry, Mercy, in your ears? Is not the day of reckoning at hand, in which the Lord will require his own with usury? Is your hope big with immortality? or is it such that you are likely to be miserable, even in this life? Are you wavering, unstable, heady, high-minded, lovers of pleasure more than lovers of God? Why don't you make a decision, and come out from the world? Satan thinks he now has you safe, while you are admiring the baubles of earth. But look away, and get a glimpse of the coming kingdom. See the earth adorned with unfading beauty, anticipate your eternal home embellished with everlasting splendor, long for the mansions which Jesus has gone to prepare for you, agonize to subdue your carnal mind, so that you can yield to the mild scepter of our King, and Satan will leave you.

Let us not love the world, nor the things that are in the world; for all that is in the world, such as the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life, is not of the Father, but is of the world.

JAMES SAWYER.

Ottawa Co., Mich.