1887.—**Marrying Outsiders
1887.—Marrying Outsiders. Please state in the SIGNS if it is right for an Adventist to keep company with a person they know is not a Christian.
H. C. E. By keeping company we suppose is meant with the intention of future union in marriage relationship. Mere friendship and common visiting is another thing. For Adventist please substitute Bible Christian, any one who follows the Lord Jesus Christ. For all such God has given instruction in His Word. Again and again in the Old Testament has He pointed the danger that follows marriage between believers and unbelievers, or those among His people uniting with those outside. If a believer and an unbeliever marry, one of these things must follow: The unbeliever will become a believer, or the believer will become an unbeliever, or there will be a nominal union of years in which there is no real true heart-union, or separation will eventually take place. Now speaking after the world, the chances are altogether against the first supposition, and thousands upon thousands have found it so to their sorrow. Why not take right home to heart the instruction that God has given in 2 Cor. 6:14-16, beginning with: "Be ye not unequally yoked together with unbelievers." It seems to us that the closest and most sacred relation earth knows, in the light of Christianity ought not to be corrupted by setting Christ aside, or in forming unions which Christ Himself can not bless. The happiness of both parties will be conserved by waiting until there is union of religious principles and objects; and any Christian ought not to deal with these things in any other way but seriously. Of course, the question naturally arises, What about those marriages in which a husband or a wife becomes converted? Then, according to the advice of the apostle in 1 Cor. 7:13-15, let them abide as they are, and let the converted one do everything in his or her power to win the unconverted.