We Are Sanctified Through the Truth in Jesus, August 16

Sanctify them through thy truth: thy word is truth. John 17:17. Every soldier engaged in the spiritual conflict must be brave in God. Those who are fighting the battles for the Prince of life must point their weapons of warfare outward, and not form a hollow square and aim their missiles of destruction at those who are serving under the banner of the Prince Emmanuel. We have no time for wounding and tearing down one another. How many there are who need to heed the words that Christ spoke to Nicodemus, ... “Except a man be born of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God.” ... There are many who claim to be followers of Christ, whose names are enrolled on the church books, who have not been a strength to the church. They have not been sanctified through the truth.... It is not receiving the truth simply, but practicing the truth, that sanctifies the soul. Let those who would be sanctified through the truth search carefully and prayerfully both the Old and New Testaments that they may know what is truth.... Those who are truly converted to Christ [must] keep on constant guard lest they shall accept error in place of truth. Those who think that it matters not what they believe in doctrine, so long as they believe in Jesus Christ, are on dangerous ground. There are some who think that they will be just as acceptable to God by obeying some other law than the law of God—by meeting some other conditions than those He has specified in the gospel—as if they obeyed His commandments and complied with His requirements. But they are under a fatal delusion, and unless they renounce this heresy and come into harmony with His requirements, they cannot become members of the royal family.... Those who claim to be sanctified, and who give no heed to the words of divine authority spoken from Mount Sinai, make it manifest that they will not render to God the obedience that the Lawgiver requires....“Without me,” Christ says, “ye can do nothing.” Provision for our perfection is found in union with Christ. “I in them, and thou in me, that they may be made perfect in one.” ... What pleasure could [heaven] possibly be to souls who would not be drawn to Jesus in this life, to study His character and to be with Him in the life that is to come? They would prefer to be anywhere else than in the presence and companionship of Him in whom they have no delight. They did not know Him while in the world and could not learn to know Him in heaven.—Manuscript 40, 1894.