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LET US HAVE REALITIES

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Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Oct 8, 1901

FromReview and Herald, Vol. 78, No. 41.

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LET US HAVE REALITIES.

By L. A. S.

The Christian religion brings to the individual Christian realities. It does not ask him to be satisfied with anything less; it does not ask him to accept any second-hand evidence of its truth. Christianity demonstrates its genuineness by that which it continually gives to the true believer.
The Catholic religion has much to say about relics. These play an important part in its systems of supposed benefits. Christianity does not concern itself with relics; it does not need to, for it bestows always the real thing itself to which it calls the believer’s attention. The false religion presents to us the (supposed) bones of a dead saint; the true religion presents to us the risen, living Saviour himself. The false religion presents to us tradition — the decisions and decrees of man professing to interpret the will of God; the true religion takes us to God’s word itself. The true religion brings to us, each week, a genuine part of that which was before the fall — the Sabbath. The Sabbath is not a relic of Eden; it is a genuine part of Eden, existing unmarred and unchanged by the fall of Adam and all the sin and ruin that has followed.
The false religion tells a man of what he can do to save himself, or of what other men promise to do for him; the true religion presents to us the “exceeding great and precious promises” of God, whereby we may become “partakers of the divine nature.” The false religion tells us of a God afar off; the true religion proclaims “God with us;” His kingdom within us, His throne in the believer’s heart. The false religion tells us of some far-off paradise; the true religion creates a paradise within us. The true religion gives us not a dried-up relic of something good that existed long ago, but a real foretaste of the good that is to come.
It is our privilege to know the reality of the things of God; to “taste and see that the Lord is good.” “Let us know the reality of our salvation by sitting with Christ himself in the heavenly places.
L. A. S.