The woman in scarlet and purple, riding on the scarlet covered beast, has passed around her wine cup, and the world is drunk with Babylon’s false doctrines. Speaking of the “wine of Babylon,” Ellen G. White makes this clear comment: “What is that wine? Her false doctrines. She has given to the world a false Sabbath instead of the Sabbath of the fourth commandment, and has repeated the falsehood that Satan first told to Eve in Eden, — the natural immortality of the soul.” — Ellen G. White, Review and Herald, Dec. 6, 1892. These erroneous teachings have deceived millions. As a result, God is giving His people, still entrenched in error, a final last-day appeal.
Read Revelation 18:4-5. What is God’s appeal to multitudes still in fallen religious organizations?
Image © Review & Herald Publishing at Goodsalt.com
As we already have seen (but worth repeating), many of God’s people are in religious organizations that have compromised biblical teachings. They do not understand the truths of Scripture. God’s loving appeal is straightforward: “Come out of her, my people, lest you share in her sins, and lest you receive of her plagues” (Revelation 18:4, NKJV).
Read 1 John 3:4 and compare it to Romans 14:23. How does the Bible define sin? How do these Bible passages harmonize?
Sin is the transgression or the breaking of God’s law. The only way anybody can obey the law is through faith in the power of the living Christ. We are weak, frail, faltering, sinful human beings. By faith when we accept Christ, His grace atones for our past and empowers our present. He gives us “grace and apostleship for obedience” (Romans 1:5, NKJV). Heaven’s appeal to His people in churches that do not respect and obey the law of God is to step out by faith. His appeal to Adventists in Sabbath keeping congregations is to forsake all self-centered, human attempts at obedience and live godly lives by faith in the grace of Christ, which delivers us from sin’s condemnation and sin’s domination. And just as Israel’s faithfulness to the law (Deuteronomy 4:6) would have been a powerful witness to the world, our faithfulness, too, can be a powerful witness and help guide people out of Babylon.
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