
We are not to drift into worldly channels. Consider the cleansing of the temple at the beginning of Christ’s ministry. He found the Jews intent on gain. They had made the court of the temple a scene of sacrilegious traffic, and had turned the ancient and sacred institution of the passover into a means of vile profit. They bartered deeply, turning the service instituted by Christ himself into the worship of mammon. But Christ came suddenly into the temple courts, divinity flashed through humanity, and raising a whip of small cords in his hand, with a voice that they will hear again in the execution of the judgment, he said, “Take these things hence. It is written, My Father’s house shall be called a house of prayer, but ye have made it a den of thieves.” The priests and rulers saw as it were an avenging Angel, such as guarded the way to the tree of life.
Today this sacrilegious work is being more than repeated. There will be messages borne, and those who have rejected the messages God has sent, will hear most startling declarations. The Holy Spirit will invest the announcement with a sanctity and solemnity which will appear terrible in the ears of those who would not hear the pleadings of Infinite Love, and who have not responded to the offers of pardon and forgiveness. Injured and insulted Deity will speak, proclaiming the sins that have been hidden. As the priests and rulers, full of indignation and terror, sought refuge in flight at the cleansing of the temple, so will it be in the work for these last days. The woes that will be pronounced upon those who had light from heaven, and did not heed it, they will feel, but they will have no power to act. This is represented in the parable of the wise and foolish virgins. They cannot obtain a character from the wise virgins, and they have no oil of grace to discern the clear light, or to accept it, that they may join the procession going into the marriage supper of the Lamb. 1888 1490.2 – 1888 1490.3