And Moses said unto Korah, Hear, I pray you, ye sons of Levi:
Moses falls on his face in anguish and then pleads with Korah and the Levites with him to listen as they openly challenge his and Aaron's authority. His call to them as sons of Levi reminds them that God had separated them to bring them near to Himself for the service of the tabernacle and ministry to the congregation, an honor that is no small thing yet they treated as a small thing. They were not content with that trusted place given by God, but in pride, ambition, envy and self-seeking desired to be exalted to the priesthood also and to compel a change in God's established order. That seeking was gathering together against the Lord Himself, for murmuring against Aaron's God-given office and rejecting God's chosen instrument was sin against Jehovah and insult to His Spirit, wrought by Satan's delusion upon minds that would not implicitly trust and obey. The facts are faithfully recorded for warning and instruction to God's people near the close of time, exposing the same rebellion whenever self-will turns aside God's counsel, lessens confidence in the testimonies He has sent, and sows distrust toward those He has appointed.
Context and Address
Moses spoke these words in anguish after falling on his face before the people, pleading with Korah and calling on him and the Levites with him to listen. He addressed Korah, a Levite connected with the service of the tabernacle, together with the other Levites and sons of Levi who challenged his and Aaron's authority. The verse belongs to the account of the rebellion of Korah, Dathan, and Abiram, showing Moses addressing Korah and the Levites involved in it.
The address occurred within an open rupture in which Korah publicly accused Moses and Aaron of taking authority for themselves and claimed he and his associates were equally entitled to share it. That challenge was framed as a defense of the congregation's holiness and liberty, but it was a faction's open rupture against Moses and Aaron. It was rebellion against God's appointed leadership in which Korah and his followers trusted their own judgment over Moses' and persisted despite God's judgments.
To make his purpose sure Korah drew Dathan and Abiram, descendants of Reuben, into rebellion with him. They reasoned that as descendants of Jacob's eldest son the chief authority Moses held belonged to them, and with Korah they were resolved to obtain the office of the priesthood. The three zealously influenced two hundred and fifty princes of the congregation, men of renown, who were also determined to have a share in the priesthood and the government, to join them. The wider revolt thus involved two hundred and fifty leaders and was preserved in Scripture as an admonition for later generations.
Honored Yet Discontented
Moses' call to hear as sons of Levi is a reminder that the God of Israel had separated them from the congregation to bring them near to Himself to do the service of the tabernacle and to stand before the congregation to minister to them, and that honor is no small thing. They had already been honored and placed in positions of trust by God and not by Moses. At the same time God had established Moses as chief governor and had given the priesthood to Aaron and his sons, with sacred consecration of Aaron as high priest.
Yet they treated that separation as a small thing, were not contented, forgot who had placed them, and charged Moses with taking too much upon himself. The rebellion was driven by pride, ambition, envy, discontent and self-seeking. Those honored with a part in the work felt they were equal to Moses and a very essential part of the great whole, that credit and honor should be given to them, that they wanted to be commanders, and that Moses should not have all the honor.
Korah was not satisfied with his assigned service connected with the tabernacle and desired to be exalted to the priesthood also. He sought to compel Moses to change the order of things so that he might be raised to the dignity of the priesthood, in opposition to God's established order. That ambition illustrates the danger of selfish ambition and of trying to replace God's sacred order with human plans.
Rebellion Against God
To seek the priesthood in addition to the honored service already given was to gather together against the Lord Himself. The challenge to Moses and Aaron was not merely a dispute over human leadership but rebellion against the authority God had given them, and opposition to Aaron's God-given office was opposition to God's established order. That rebellion was sin against Jehovah, and Korah and those who died with him justly suffered the Lord's wrath. Murmuring against Aaron was wholly misdirected, for Aaron had assumed no office of himself but God had placed him in the sacred office.
In rejecting God's chosen instrument Moses the rebels rejected Christ, their invisible leader, and insulted the Spirit of God. They mistakenly considered themselves righteous and believed they were serving God, yet the same spirit appears whenever people follow their own will against God's will. The rebellion came from Satan's wizard-like power over minds that do not implicitly trust and obey God, a moral infatuation that steels the heart against the influence of the Holy Spirit. Satan deluded them with the idea that they were opposing only a human leader, a man like themselves, but they were deceived by Satan by their own consent, because they placed themselves in his power.
By the terrible manifestation of divine judgment in the destruction of Korah and his company, God sustained Aaron in the holy office of the priesthood against challenge. The Lord had conferred the office of the priesthood upon the family of Aaron and honored Aaron with sacred consecration as high priest, and that judgment vindicated His appointment.
Warning for Last Days
The facts about Korah and his company with Dathan and Abiram are faithfully chronicled and recorded for a warning, instruction and admonition to God's people, especially those living near the close of time upon whom the ends of the world are come. The history should be read carefully and prayerfully, to learn from rebellion and not follow the rebels' example, but to show genuine repentance. The chapter warns against self-seeking service, for work mingled with self and work done in self will not stand, while work done in God will endure.
Persistent rebellion and evil in the Lord's work must be dealt with by decisive action against those resisting His direction, otherwise God's servants lose His honor and the work is harmed. Disaffection and opposition like that of the Korah, Dathan and Abiram uprising cannot destroy a work that is of God. The challenge brought disastrous results for the rebels and those they influenced, for the leaders including Korah, Dathan and Abiram faced destruction. Those who died died before the Lord by plague and by the swallowing up of wrongdoers, and presumptuous wickedness, sin and exultation after the judgment brought death to thousands more. Their fate warns against rejecting light and joining those who oppose God, and compares to them all who put their own advantage ahead of responsibility for God's cause.
Stubborn opposition brings fearful deception, for the rebels trusted their own judgment over Moses, charged him with doing great injury to Israel, and persisted despite God's marked judgments in destroying the leaders and princes. They remained so set in opinion that the next morning the survivors blamed Moses and Aaron for killing the people of the Lord. Their disaffection was so deep that even God's judgment in swallowing up the wrongdoers did not cure it. Genuine rebellion is never curable.
Yet the Israelites later acknowledged that Moses and Aaron had been right. Nearly forty years later, when brought again into the wilderness to the place where God had proved them after leaving Egypt, God caused the living stream of water from the rock to cease to prove whether they would endure trial or murmur. Then the thirsty congregation murmured against Moses and Aaron, counted those who had died in that rebellion as brethren, and wished they had been among those who died with them rather than face thirst in the wilderness.
Confronting Present Rebellion
Turning aside God's counsel to suit self, stubbornly holding to one's own opinions, and lessening the confidence of God's people in the testimonies He has sent is rebellion against God as certainly as that of Korah, Dathan and Abiram. Refusing those testimonies, laboring to make them of none effect, being deceived and deceiving others, and strengthening evildoers so that unbelief spreads and multitudes quote and follow that influence stands charged in the books of heaven to be met in the day of final accounts. That sin must be confessed and let go beforehand to judgment so it may be blotted out when the time of refreshing comes and God sends Jesus. Even after God in marked judgment destroyed the leaders and princes, those united with them remained so set in opinion that the next morning the survivors blamed Moses for killing the people of the Lord, showing what fearful deception comes upon the human mind and how hard it is to convince souls imbued with a spirit not of God.
Satan leads persons to imitate Korah by rising against the plain testimony God would have borne in rebuking wrongs among His people, including hurtful indulgences such as tea, coffee, snuff and tobacco, because it would destroy their idols. Undecided between conviction of truth and appetite or self-indulgence, they are weakened by indecision until appetite prevails and the sense of sacred things is perverted by slow poisons, and they refuse to deny self and make an entire sacrifice whatever the consequence. That decision raises a wall of separation between them and those cleansing themselves from all filthiness of the flesh and of the spirit and perfecting holiness in the fear of the Lord. Finding the straight testimonies in their way and a cause of uneasiness, they find relief in warring against them, striving to make themselves and others believe they are untrue, saying the people are all right and the reproving testimonies make the trouble. When the rebellious unfurl their banner, all the disaffected rally around the standard, and all the spiritually defective, the lame, the halt and the blind, unite their influence to scatter and sow discord.
The rising of Korah, Dathan and Abiram is reproach against those upon whom God has laid the burden of His work, repeated by those who come up afterward and receive precious points of truth and the Sabbath all prepared to their hand, costing them nothing while costing others much toil to bring out, and then rise up to reproach those burden-bearers instead of showing gratitude. Their example warns against accusing and condemning those God has entrusted with the work, against drawing away from God's appointed leaders and creating division, and against gaining sympathizers and undermining confidence in those God appointed by sowing doubt and presenting a deceptive and ridiculous account of their treatment. Their party draws away from the body, accuses fellow believers, and uses some members' errors to build self up. Bearing false witness against brethren, leavening minds with distrust, weakening faith in God's instrumentalities, and questioning and doubting men whom God is teaching, guiding and leading brings an experience like theirs, for those who listen to Satan's suggestions and pass them on, planting doubt and creating distrust, envy and evil-surmising toward ministering brethren, follow the same spirit and meet the same result.
Such work arising from within, in which fellow laborers unjustly charge God's servants with many sins and present in a ridiculous light those God appointed to do His work, creates dissension, cuts off influence, makes false impressions and false sympathy, leads others into the same error and endangers their souls. It is an offense to God and must not be met with silence, for silence does no justice to the accusers or to those misled. Accusers must be called on every point to bring proof, every charge carefully investigated and nothing left uncertain, unsubstantiated reproach lifted, and the people undeceived so they are not left to think it may be or may not be true or to believe a lie. Those who claim to believe the truth must not judge by human feeling, sympathize with the wrongdoer, accuse the faithful reprover of an unkind spirit, or stand between the offender and God, but hold peace and let God's arrows fall where directed to pierce souls that have little sense of sin and are ignorant of the progressive character of the Christian life.
Taking the same ground by threatening to sever all connection with brethren unless they consent to one's terms, and going on year after year in the face of all warnings to do according to one's own mind and judgment while refusing to hear the Lord, is dangerous ground to be warned off. Such threatenings should be met with firm rectitude and determination that is not made afraid, choosing separation rather than consenting to dishonoring propositions. That same rebellion was acted over again at Minneapolis by those who cherished firm self-complacency and unwillingness to accept and acknowledge light and precious truth sent from heaven, with pride, prejudice, backsliding and unsanctified independence doing insult to the Spirit of God. They would not hearken to be blessed and healed, would not acknowledge God's appointed position nor heed testimony, and despised not the human instrument but the messengers and the message God sent, showing contempt for the word of the Lord, while Satan blinded eyes, perverted judgment, and left obscured spiritual eyesight with mockery, disgust at God's word, lightness, trifling, jesting and joking, and hearts not set to seek God.
Unless every soul repents, humbles pride, confesses lack of the Spirit of God and is converted to be healed, they will walk in darkness in the sparks of their own kindling and lie down in sorrow, and God will remove the candlestick out of its place. To be found among them at such a time as this is to strengthen the gainsayer, to unsettle minds and faith in the testimonies, to sow impressions of unbelief in other minds that cannot be removed even if the sower later recovers faith, and to labor to do the very work Satan is doing, answering Christ's question whether He will find faith on the earth when He comes. The account is rebellion and apostasy to be called by its right name, faithfully chronicled to pass into history for the admonition of those upon whom the ends of the world are come, and genuine rebellion is never curable. It exposes failure to sink the shaft deep into the mines of truth and inability to distinguish precious ore from base material, the voice of the true Shepherd from that of a stranger, and the false from the genuine, applying to those who after more than half a century of light seek to undeceive the whole church by declaring God's servant a fraud and deceiver, who must humbly repent, review this chapter in experience, and know leaders by their fruits.
That same spirit of Korah, Dathan and Abiram appears when the heart is not under the subduing power of the Holy Spirit and Satan's attributes are revealed in oppressing fellow men and sending forth an influence contrary to truth, justice and righteousness, when workers oppress one another and one institution desires to control all others, and when men entrusted with weighty responsibilities but having no living connection with God cast aside warnings again and again. It applies to leaders at the publishing house who were self-important and self-sufficient and sought control over others, and to quite a number in New York who cling to a leader throwing around himself a mild, devoted, religious garb while corruption and rebellion are within, drawing followers into darkness with a heart at war with the third angel's message and with the visions. Church leaders who entrench themselves behind the sacredness of office while disobeying light, mingling work for years with human devising and selfishness and claim to special exaltation, hurting God's servants and sustaining men God cannot favor, forfeit all right to claim sacred power and to be respected as God's voice. Misinterpreting and misapplying God's words and warnings to support their own theories creates confusion, betraying sacred trust and leading others into rebellion must be met with a clear stand for truth rather than persuasive words or halfhearted loyalty, and calling truth error and darkness light warns against rejecting the third angel's message and opposing those doing God's will under His Spirit.
People who put their own advantage ahead of responsibility for God's cause are compared to these wicked men whose selfish rebellion and conduct brought judgment. Those who criticize and resist leadership while God is guiding its work, who resist appointed leadership and reject message and testimony through pride, prejudice and unsanctified independence, draw others into disaffection and bring judgment, showing contempt for God's word and Spirit that leads to spiritual darkness unless they repent, are converted and change attitude to work in Christ's way.
Moses falls on his face in anguish and then pleads with Korah and the Levites with him to listen as they openly challenge his and Aaron's authority. His call to them as sons of Levi reminds them that God had separated them to bring them near to Himself for the service of the tabernacle and ministry to the congregation, an honor that is no small thing yet they treated as a small thing. They were not content with that trusted place given by God, but in pride, ambition, envy and self-seeking desired to be exalted to the priesthood also and to compel a change in God's established order. That seeking was gathering together against the Lord Himself, for murmuring against Aaron's God-given office and rejecting God's chosen instrument was sin against Jehovah and insult to His Spirit, wrought by Satan's delusion upon minds that would not implicitly trust and obey. The facts are faithfully recorded for warning and instruction to God's people near the close of time, exposing the same rebellion whenever self-will turns aside God's counsel, lessens confidence in the testimonies He has sent, and sows distrust toward those He has appointed.
Context and Address
Moses spoke these words in anguish after falling on his face before the people, pleading with Korah and calling on him and the Levites with him to listen. He addressed Korah, a Levite connected with the service of the tabernacle, together with the other Levites and sons of Levi who challenged his and Aaron's authority. The verse belongs to the account of the rebellion of Korah, Dathan, and Abiram, showing Moses addressing Korah and the Levites involved in it.
The address occurred within an open rupture in which Korah publicly accused Moses and Aaron of taking authority for themselves and claimed he and his associates were equally entitled to share it. That challenge was framed as a defense of the congregation's holiness and liberty, but it was a faction's open rupture against Moses and Aaron. It was rebellion against God's appointed leadership in which Korah and his followers trusted their own judgment over Moses' and persisted despite God's judgments.
To make his purpose sure Korah drew Dathan and Abiram, descendants of Reuben, into rebellion with him. They reasoned that as descendants of Jacob's eldest son the chief authority Moses held belonged to them, and with Korah they were resolved to obtain the office of the priesthood. The three zealously influenced two hundred and fifty princes of the congregation, men of renown, who were also determined to have a share in the priesthood and the government, to join them. The wider revolt thus involved two hundred and fifty leaders and was preserved in Scripture as an admonition for later generations.
Honored Yet Discontented
Moses' call to hear as sons of Levi is a reminder that the God of Israel had separated them from the congregation to bring them near to Himself to do the service of the tabernacle and to stand before the congregation to minister to them, and that honor is no small thing. They had already been honored and placed in positions of trust by God and not by Moses. At the same time God had established Moses as chief governor and had given the priesthood to Aaron and his sons, with sacred consecration of Aaron as high priest.
Yet they treated that separation as a small thing, were not contented, forgot who had placed them, and charged Moses with taking too much upon himself. The rebellion was driven by pride, ambition, envy, discontent and self-seeking. Those honored with a part in the work felt they were equal to Moses and a very essential part of the great whole, that credit and honor should be given to them, that they wanted to be commanders, and that Moses should not have all the honor.
Korah was not satisfied with his assigned service connected with the tabernacle and desired to be exalted to the priesthood also. He sought to compel Moses to change the order of things so that he might be raised to the dignity of the priesthood, in opposition to God's established order. That ambition illustrates the danger of selfish ambition and of trying to replace God's sacred order with human plans.
Rebellion Against God
To seek the priesthood in addition to the honored service already given was to gather together against the Lord Himself. The challenge to Moses and Aaron was not merely a dispute over human leadership but rebellion against the authority God had given them, and opposition to Aaron's God-given office was opposition to God's established order. That rebellion was sin against Jehovah, and Korah and those who died with him justly suffered the Lord's wrath. Murmuring against Aaron was wholly misdirected, for Aaron had assumed no office of himself but God had placed him in the sacred office.
In rejecting God's chosen instrument Moses the rebels rejected Christ, their invisible leader, and insulted the Spirit of God. They mistakenly considered themselves righteous and believed they were serving God, yet the same spirit appears whenever people follow their own will against God's will. The rebellion came from Satan's wizard-like power over minds that do not implicitly trust and obey God, a moral infatuation that steels the heart against the influence of the Holy Spirit. Satan deluded them with the idea that they were opposing only a human leader, a man like themselves, but they were deceived by Satan by their own consent, because they placed themselves in his power.
By the terrible manifestation of divine judgment in the destruction of Korah and his company, God sustained Aaron in the holy office of the priesthood against challenge. The Lord had conferred the office of the priesthood upon the family of Aaron and honored Aaron with sacred consecration as high priest, and that judgment vindicated His appointment.
Warning for Last Days
The facts about Korah and his company with Dathan and Abiram are faithfully chronicled and recorded for a warning, instruction and admonition to God's people, especially those living near the close of time upon whom the ends of the world are come. The history should be read carefully and prayerfully, to learn from rebellion and not follow the rebels' example, but to show genuine repentance. The chapter warns against self-seeking service, for work mingled with self and work done in self will not stand, while work done in God will endure.
Persistent rebellion and evil in the Lord's work must be dealt with by decisive action against those resisting His direction, otherwise God's servants lose His honor and the work is harmed. Disaffection and opposition like that of the Korah, Dathan and Abiram uprising cannot destroy a work that is of God. The challenge brought disastrous results for the rebels and those they influenced, for the leaders including Korah, Dathan and Abiram faced destruction. Those who died died before the Lord by plague and by the swallowing up of wrongdoers, and presumptuous wickedness, sin and exultation after the judgment brought death to thousands more. Their fate warns against rejecting light and joining those who oppose God, and compares to them all who put their own advantage ahead of responsibility for God's cause.
Stubborn opposition brings fearful deception, for the rebels trusted their own judgment over Moses, charged him with doing great injury to Israel, and persisted despite God's marked judgments in destroying the leaders and princes. They remained so set in opinion that the next morning the survivors blamed Moses and Aaron for killing the people of the Lord. Their disaffection was so deep that even God's judgment in swallowing up the wrongdoers did not cure it. Genuine rebellion is never curable.
Yet the Israelites later acknowledged that Moses and Aaron had been right. Nearly forty years later, when brought again into the wilderness to the place where God had proved them after leaving Egypt, God caused the living stream of water from the rock to cease to prove whether they would endure trial or murmur. Then the thirsty congregation murmured against Moses and Aaron, counted those who had died in that rebellion as brethren, and wished they had been among those who died with them rather than face thirst in the wilderness.
Confronting Present Rebellion
Turning aside God's counsel to suit self, stubbornly holding to one's own opinions, and lessening the confidence of God's people in the testimonies He has sent is rebellion against God as certainly as that of Korah, Dathan and Abiram. Refusing those testimonies, laboring to make them of none effect, being deceived and deceiving others, and strengthening evildoers so that unbelief spreads and multitudes quote and follow that influence stands charged in the books of heaven to be met in the day of final accounts. That sin must be confessed and let go beforehand to judgment so it may be blotted out when the time of refreshing comes and God sends Jesus. Even after God in marked judgment destroyed the leaders and princes, those united with them remained so set in opinion that the next morning the survivors blamed Moses for killing the people of the Lord, showing what fearful deception comes upon the human mind and how hard it is to convince souls imbued with a spirit not of God.
Satan leads persons to imitate Korah by rising against the plain testimony God would have borne in rebuking wrongs among His people, including hurtful indulgences such as tea, coffee, snuff and tobacco, because it would destroy their idols. Undecided between conviction of truth and appetite or self-indulgence, they are weakened by indecision until appetite prevails and the sense of sacred things is perverted by slow poisons, and they refuse to deny self and make an entire sacrifice whatever the consequence. That decision raises a wall of separation between them and those cleansing themselves from all filthiness of the flesh and of the spirit and perfecting holiness in the fear of the Lord. Finding the straight testimonies in their way and a cause of uneasiness, they find relief in warring against them, striving to make themselves and others believe they are untrue, saying the people are all right and the reproving testimonies make the trouble. When the rebellious unfurl their banner, all the disaffected rally around the standard, and all the spiritually defective, the lame, the halt and the blind, unite their influence to scatter and sow discord.
The rising of Korah, Dathan and Abiram is reproach against those upon whom God has laid the burden of His work, repeated by those who come up afterward and receive precious points of truth and the Sabbath all prepared to their hand, costing them nothing while costing others much toil to bring out, and then rise up to reproach those burden-bearers instead of showing gratitude. Their example warns against accusing and condemning those God has entrusted with the work, against drawing away from God's appointed leaders and creating division, and against gaining sympathizers and undermining confidence in those God appointed by sowing doubt and presenting a deceptive and ridiculous account of their treatment. Their party draws away from the body, accuses fellow believers, and uses some members' errors to build self up. Bearing false witness against brethren, leavening minds with distrust, weakening faith in God's instrumentalities, and questioning and doubting men whom God is teaching, guiding and leading brings an experience like theirs, for those who listen to Satan's suggestions and pass them on, planting doubt and creating distrust, envy and evil-surmising toward ministering brethren, follow the same spirit and meet the same result.
Such work arising from within, in which fellow laborers unjustly charge God's servants with many sins and present in a ridiculous light those God appointed to do His work, creates dissension, cuts off influence, makes false impressions and false sympathy, leads others into the same error and endangers their souls. It is an offense to God and must not be met with silence, for silence does no justice to the accusers or to those misled. Accusers must be called on every point to bring proof, every charge carefully investigated and nothing left uncertain, unsubstantiated reproach lifted, and the people undeceived so they are not left to think it may be or may not be true or to believe a lie. Those who claim to believe the truth must not judge by human feeling, sympathize with the wrongdoer, accuse the faithful reprover of an unkind spirit, or stand between the offender and God, but hold peace and let God's arrows fall where directed to pierce souls that have little sense of sin and are ignorant of the progressive character of the Christian life.
Taking the same ground by threatening to sever all connection with brethren unless they consent to one's terms, and going on year after year in the face of all warnings to do according to one's own mind and judgment while refusing to hear the Lord, is dangerous ground to be warned off. Such threatenings should be met with firm rectitude and determination that is not made afraid, choosing separation rather than consenting to dishonoring propositions. That same rebellion was acted over again at Minneapolis by those who cherished firm self-complacency and unwillingness to accept and acknowledge light and precious truth sent from heaven, with pride, prejudice, backsliding and unsanctified independence doing insult to the Spirit of God. They would not hearken to be blessed and healed, would not acknowledge God's appointed position nor heed testimony, and despised not the human instrument but the messengers and the message God sent, showing contempt for the word of the Lord, while Satan blinded eyes, perverted judgment, and left obscured spiritual eyesight with mockery, disgust at God's word, lightness, trifling, jesting and joking, and hearts not set to seek God.
Unless every soul repents, humbles pride, confesses lack of the Spirit of God and is converted to be healed, they will walk in darkness in the sparks of their own kindling and lie down in sorrow, and God will remove the candlestick out of its place. To be found among them at such a time as this is to strengthen the gainsayer, to unsettle minds and faith in the testimonies, to sow impressions of unbelief in other minds that cannot be removed even if the sower later recovers faith, and to labor to do the very work Satan is doing, answering Christ's question whether He will find faith on the earth when He comes. The account is rebellion and apostasy to be called by its right name, faithfully chronicled to pass into history for the admonition of those upon whom the ends of the world are come, and genuine rebellion is never curable. It exposes failure to sink the shaft deep into the mines of truth and inability to distinguish precious ore from base material, the voice of the true Shepherd from that of a stranger, and the false from the genuine, applying to those who after more than half a century of light seek to undeceive the whole church by declaring God's servant a fraud and deceiver, who must humbly repent, review this chapter in experience, and know leaders by their fruits.
That same spirit of Korah, Dathan and Abiram appears when the heart is not under the subduing power of the Holy Spirit and Satan's attributes are revealed in oppressing fellow men and sending forth an influence contrary to truth, justice and righteousness, when workers oppress one another and one institution desires to control all others, and when men entrusted with weighty responsibilities but having no living connection with God cast aside warnings again and again. It applies to leaders at the publishing house who were self-important and self-sufficient and sought control over others, and to quite a number in New York who cling to a leader throwing around himself a mild, devoted, religious garb while corruption and rebellion are within, drawing followers into darkness with a heart at war with the third angel's message and with the visions. Church leaders who entrench themselves behind the sacredness of office while disobeying light, mingling work for years with human devising and selfishness and claim to special exaltation, hurting God's servants and sustaining men God cannot favor, forfeit all right to claim sacred power and to be respected as God's voice. Misinterpreting and misapplying God's words and warnings to support their own theories creates confusion, betraying sacred trust and leading others into rebellion must be met with a clear stand for truth rather than persuasive words or halfhearted loyalty, and calling truth error and darkness light warns against rejecting the third angel's message and opposing those doing God's will under His Spirit.
People who put their own advantage ahead of responsibility for God's cause are compared to these wicked men whose selfish rebellion and conduct brought judgment. Those who criticize and resist leadership while God is guiding its work, who resist appointed leadership and reject message and testimony through pride, prejudice and unsanctified independence, draw others into disaffection and bring judgment, showing contempt for God's word and Spirit that leads to spiritual darkness unless they repent, are converted and change attitude to work in Christ's way.