Detrimental influences from those who love us

Everyone who has surrendered to God and His Law, and to His Son and His cross, have received the Spirit of the Son (see Galatians 4:6) and have cried out to the Father. The reconciliation to God has brought His peace to their heart, establishing a new nature that provides the environment to obey the will of God. It is the duty to every privileged soul who receives the rare gift of surrender to preserve that power to obey God, and not let it slip away (see Hebrews 2:1).

The new pleasure to do righteousness is what such an individual sought for many years, and he will not easily lose the new power providing him the means for obedience to the Law. If he does begin to lose it many red flags and sirens will be sensed in his soul. The chastisement of peace that had tormented him will return as the blessed Spirit of the Son is pushed away. It is still possible to be eternally lost, but difficult for the one who possesses the genuine gift of surrender to the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.

Because it is possible to lose surrender to Jehovah, it is our duty to ever watch for influences that win our hearts from Jesus and His Father, our Father. Friends, family, extended and immediate, co-workers and employers, the civil authorities and society’s elites, all compete with the God of heaven for our hearts. Even if they don’t know it, our love for fellow sinners can cause us to lose our love for Them who died to save us from sin—that is, both the Son of God who died among us and the Father on the throne who also experienced eternal death when He died with His only begotten, most beloved Son.

While we must love and serve our neighbor as ourselves, our highest love and service cannot be toward our neighbors. No human authority, however close to us, can ever surpass the authority God has over us. Therefore, no one should ever influence us to lose our faith in God. Many family members, whether unchurched or even churched, live for this world and care nothing for the faith in the heart of those who love God. The ungodly often have much love to give us. And we have a great desire to be loved and to see others loved.

The Lord has taken our heart of stone out of our flesh and given us a heart of flesh. The simplicity of the gospel is captured in the one great necessity of life—love. To love and to be loved is really what makes life what it is, and the newly converted one sees a new paradigm for this world, that is, that God’s love—not money—is what makes the world go around. Every aspect and doctrine of the gospel is about the simple effects of love. And love and service work outside of the church, too. There is no law against love, whether in the great moral Law of God’s kingdom, or in the laws of national, state, and local governments, or in the bylaws of organizations and civic groups.

We must jealously protect God’s gift of salvation to us. The new heart never comes easy. All our hearts are barely saved from sin and from this sinful world. “The righteous scarcely be saved.” (1Pet. 4:18). The gift of God does not easily find a home as He would love to see, especially at the end when the world so closely imitates the antediluvian world. Many, many sidetracks abound. Idols and parties and festivities and carnivals surround us. “When the Son of man cometh, shall He find faith on the earth?” (Luke 18:8).

In conclusion, the following quotation from Ellen White is very pointed, but on point as usual. In the place of the “false shepherds” who were standing in the way of present truth in the early days of the Advent movement, substitute your spouses, parents, siblings, children, and friends, who ignorantly or knowingly drive a wedge between your soul and your Saviour.

 

EARLY WRITINGS, PAGE 123-125

I have been shown that the false shepherds were drunk, but not with wine; they stagger, but not with strong drink. The truth of God is sealed up to them; they cannot read it. When they are interrogated as to what the seventh-day Sabbath is, whether or not it is the true Sabbath of the Bible, they lead the mind to fables. I saw that these prophets were like the foxes of the desert. They have not gone up into the gaps, they have not made up the hedge that the people of God may stand in the battle in the day of the Lord. When the minds of any get stirred up, and they begin to inquire of these false shepherds about the truth, they take the easiest and best manner to effect their object and quiet the minds of the inquiring ones, even changing their own position to do it. Light has shone on many of these shepherds, but they would not acknowledge it and have changed their position a number of times to evade the truth and get away from the conclusions that they must come to if they continued in their former position. The power of truth tore up their foundation, but instead of yielding to it they would get up another platform that they were not satisfied with themselves.

I saw that many of these shepherds had denied the past teachings of God; they had denied and rejected the glorious truths which they once zealously advocated and had covered themselves with mesmerism and all kinds of delusions. I saw that they were drunken with error and were leading on their flock to death. Many of the opposers of God’s truth devise mischief in their heads upon their beds, and in the day they carry out their wicked devices to put down the truth and to get something new to interest the people and divert their minds from the precious, all-important truth.

I saw that the priests who are leading on their flock to death are soon to be arrested in their dreadful career. The plagues of God are coming, but it will not be sufficient for the false shepherds to be tormented with one or two of these plagues. God’s hand at that time will be stretched out still in wrath and justice and will not be brought to Himself again until His purposes are fully accomplished, and the hireling priests are led to worship at the feet of the saints, and to acknowledge that God has loved them because they held fast the truth and kept God’s commandments, and until all the unrighteous ones are destroyed from the earth.

The different parties of professed Advent believers have each a little truth, but God has given all these truths to His children who are being prepared for the day of God. He has also given them truths that none of these parties know, neither will they understand. Things which are sealed up to them, the Lord has opened to those who will see and are ready to understand. If God has any new light to communicate, He will let His chosen and beloved understand it, without their going to have their minds enlightened by hearing those who are in darkness and error.

I was shown the necessity of those who believe that we are having the last message of mercy, being separate from those who are daily imbibing new errors. I saw that neither young nor old should attend their meetings; for it is wrong to thus encourage them while they teach error that is a deadly poison to the soul and teach for doctrines the commandments of men. The influence of such gatherings is not good. If God has delivered us from such darkness and error, we should stand fast in the liberty wherewith He has set us free and rejoice in the truth. God is displeased with us when we go to listen to error, without being obliged to go; for unless He sends us to those meetings where error is forced home to the people by the power of the will, He will not keep us. The angels cease their watchful care over us, and we are left to the buffetings of the enemy, to be darkened and weakened by him and the power of his evil angels; and the light around us becomes contaminated with the darkness.

I saw that we have no time to throw away in listening to fables. Our minds should not be thus diverted, but should be occupied with the present truth, and seeking wisdom that we may obtain a more thorough knowledge of our position, that with meekness we may be able to give a reason of our hope from the Scriptures. While false doctrines and dangerous errors are pressed upon the mind, it cannot be dwelling upon the truth which is to fit and prepare the house of Israel to stand in the day of the Lord.

 

We must cling jealously to the One who has brought usinto His marvelous light, yet also remember that everyone who divides us from our Lord, ignorantly or even knowingly, still does not know what they do. The Lord’s prayer can be ours, “Then said Jesus, Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do.” (Luke 23:34).