p. 203 | Ground of Salvation by D. T.

The Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Nov 24, 1863

Ground of Salvation.

By D. T.

SOME persons expect to be saved on the ground of their morality. So ignorant are they that the commandment is exceeding broad, they suppose they have seldom transgressed. They keep a sort of debt and credit account with their Maker. They do many more good deeds than bad ones, so that, on the whole, God is their debtor. One says he has dealt honestly with hundreds of people, and never defrauded but one. He has been kind to thousands, and never murdered but one. Will the law justify him? "Whosoever shall keep the whole law and yet offend in one point, is guilty of all." "Cursed is every one that continueth not in all things that are written in the book of the law to do them." Who can truly say that he has always loved God with all his heart, and his neighbor as himself? and yet I heard a man, over eighty years of age, say he "did not know what he had done to forfeit heaven." How many others have similar feelings. Yet they never heartily espoused the cause of Christ. They never came out from the world and were separate. They never confessed Christ before men. They never were convinced that they were justly condemned by that holy law which they had transgressed, times without number. Hence they never felt their need of the Saviour. Having not seen their sinfulness, they never offered to God "the sacrifice of a broken spirit, a broken and a contrite heart." Hence, the Lord Jesus has never been to them the chiefest among ten thousand, the one altogether lovely. They are building their hopes of heaven not upon "the only sure foundation which God has laid in Zion, but upon the sand." Continuing thus, practically, to slight "the only name under heaven given among men whereby we must be saved," they will meet a most overwhelming disappointment. Just as certainly, sinner, as you rely on your own righteousness to save you, you will lose your soul. By the mercies of God, then, flee from the wrath to come and lay hold on the hope set before you. Hasten your escape; for there is a period, beyond which if you delay, it will be too late, eternally too late.—D. T.—Am. Missionary.