It’s a great privilege to study God’s Word with you; it’s a wonderful privilege that the Lord has given us to extend our time.  We are not in caves; our religious liberty has not been suppressed that we can not have freedom of assembly.  I hope that this study will be a great encouragement to you. 

Isaiah 30:29 says: “You shall have a song as in the night when a holy festival is kept, and gladness of heart as when one goes with a flute, to come into the mountain of the Lord, to the Mighty One of Israel.”  Did you notice in the text that the Lord said you are going to have a song in the night?  You are going to have a song in the night, friend, if you are one of God’s children.  The night is coming soon, and I want to sing that song!

It happened in 1829.  It happened to a young girl by the name of Susanna Foster.  You have probably heard of her younger brother, Steven Foster, a famous songwriter from the last century.  His older sister, Susanna, was a very promising musician, a promising singer, but while she was still young, she contracted tuberculosis and, as a result, she came to the last night of her life.  Her family knew she was going to die, because she was seriously ill, but they didn’t know that the end would be that night.  Some of her friends were with her that night, and they stayed up with her all night.  They talked about that night after she died how—even though Susanna’s lungs had been badly damaged by the tuberculosis and she was dying—that night she would sing.  They said that at 4:30 in the morning the song was still clear and crisp, but a short time after she sang that song she died; she never sang again.

Her family mourned her loss, but they had a memory.  Steven Foster had that memory of his older sister whom he never really knew, since he was quite small when she died.  She was a very dedicated Christian.  If you are saved, one day you will almost for sure, from what I’ve read about her life, meet Susanna in heaven. 

Sometimes things happen to us; we go through discouraging experiences in life that we don’t understand.  Some years ago, when I was teaching at Southwestern Adventist College, the wife of one of my friends developed breast cancer.  She was just a young woman with three children—two young daughters and a baby boy—when this happened.  The doctors did surgery; they treated her; they tried to help her get better.  She took chemotherapy, but she didn’t get better; she got worse.  You know, when you are 29 years old and you have two beautiful girls and one beautiful baby boy, you don’t want to die, do you?  She didn’t want to die.  That was the last thing that she wanted to do, but sometimes we don’t know what’s best; we don’t understand.

I think of a story in the Old Testament of the Bible about a man that was told to get his house in order, because he was going to die.  (II Kings 20:1.)  He turned his face toward the wall, and he said, “Lord, I don’t want to die.”  Who was that?  That was Hezekiah.

Isaiah told Hezekiah, “Get your house in order, because you are going to die.”

Hezekiah said, “I don’t want to die!”  He pleaded, “Lord I’ve been faithful to you.  Think of what I’ve done.  I’ve served you; I haven’t been a wicked person; I have done what is right.  Please, Lord, don’t let me die now.”  Verse 3.

Every time I think of that story I say in my heart, “Lord, if you see it’s time for me to die, help me not to make a mistake like that!” 

Hezekiah pleaded with the Lord, and the Lord answered his prayer.  The Lord said, “I’m going to lengthen your life 15 years.”  Verses 4–6. 

Do you know what happened during those 15 years?  He had a child by the name of Manasseh.  Are you aware of the fact that Manasseh was one of the most wicked kings that Judah ever had?  It was Manasseh who was responsible for martyring Isaiah the prophet.

He caused so much innocent blood to be shed in Jerusalem that God said, “Because of Manasseh, this nation is going into captivity.”  II Kings 21:11–14.  After Manasseh, when his grandson, Josiah, was a good king, the Lord said, “I won’t make it happen during your time, but because of what Manasseh did, this nation has to go into captivity.”  II Kings 22:16–20.

That was a result of Hezekiah not dying at the right time.  Sometimes it is hard to accept God’s will, when we don’t understand it.  This young wife, 29 years old, didn’t want to die either, but she got worse. 

My family attended the same church as this young woman and her family, and I remember one Sabbath, on the way out of church, as I approached one of the exit doors, I looked to my right and there she was.  She was so bad by that time that she was in a wheel chair, and she was on oxygen.  Her husband was standing beside her.  I looked up at him; he was too sad for words.  I just gave him a nod of recognition, and he nodded back; nothing was said.  It was just too sad to say anything.  I didn’t know at the time that that would be the last time I would see her alive.  A few days later while I was out-of-town, my wife told me on the telephone that this lady had died.  I just felt terrible.

I went to visit her husband, her widower.  When I walked into the house, the three children were there; he was there.  You could feel the emptiness and the hollowness inside that house, because the light of that house was not there, his crown of rejoicing was not there.

As a Christian, I felt I had a Christian duty to encourage my friend, so I opened my Bible and read the following passage to him: “Do not marvel at this, because the hour is coming in which all who are in the graves will hear His voice, and they will come out—those who have done good unto the resurrection of life and those who have done evil unto the resurrection of condemnation.”  John 5:28, 29. 

I tried to comfort him.  It’s hard to comfort someone in a situation like that, but I tried.  He told me about the last night, the last day that she was alive.  Her condition had become so bad that they took her to a hospital in Dallas.  They knew she would die eventually, but the doctors were going to try to save her life and help her a little longer.  She was in the hospital, and he decided that he would stay there with her all night.  In the afternoon, she said to him, “Who are all these people in my room?”

He looked around and said,” I don’t see anyone; there’s nobody here.” 

She said, “Yes there is.  This room is full of bright, shining beings, and they are all around my bed.  They are all over this room.”  He didn’t see anybody. 

After a while, it was suppertime and supper was brought to his wife and to him.  A person in her situation often doesn’t have a very good appetite, but surprisingly, she ate a good supper.  After supper, they had a wonderful conversation together.  They didn’t know it was going to be the last conversation they would have, but they shared a wonderful conversation together, and then she went to sleep. 

She went to sleep as her husband was sitting in a chair by her bed, and after a while, he went to sleep also.  About 5 o’clock in the morning he woke up with a start; he felt her and saw that she wasn’t breathing.  Immediately he called a nurse.  When the nurse came in, she was in a state of shock.  She said that she had just been in the room ten minutes before, and everything was fine.  Well, everything wasn’t fine.  They tried to resuscitate, her but it was too late—she was gone. 

She had prayed to the Lord, “Lord, this is so distasteful to me leaving my children, but if I have to die, let me die in my sleep.”  And the Lord answered her prayer.

It was hard for all of them—not just hard for their family but hard for all of their friends.  I was one of those friends.  My wife and I invited him and his children over to our house for Sabbath dinner.  We tried to be friendly.  We tried to ease the pain a little bit. 

A few days after that, I was in my car early Sunday morning.  In those days, I was participating in an inter-denominational jail ministry, and as I was driving to the jail early Sunday morning all of these things were going over in my mind.  I didn’t really want to think about it; I wanted to think about what I needed to be doing.  I was going to need to be encouraging and helping to the prisoners, but somehow this morning I couldn’t get all this out of my mind.  One of the things that was going through my mind was that this little two-year-old boy, when he grew up, wouldn’t even be able to remember his own mother.  It really got me.

Do you show the people in your family the affection that you ought to show them?  If sometime something should happen and your mother or father, your spouse, or your brother or sister, or your children were not there any more, would you have some pleasant memories of the way you talked to them and the way you had treated them? 

I remember a story I heard of a busy physician who was in his office and his wife stopped by the office.  She had to do some business downtown so she stopped by to see him.  Before she left, she asked her husband to kiss her.  This should not have been an unacceptable request, but he gave her just a peck on the cheek.  Surprised, she asked, “Can’t you do better than that?”  He said something to the effect that he was busy and had to earn a living. 

A few minutes after she left, he received a telephone call.  A policeman was on the other end of the line, and he said, “Your wife has just been in a serious car accident.”

A few minutes before he had been impatient and said, “I’m busy.”  Now he was thinking, Oh, no! what if I never see her again, and the last words I spoke to her were words of impatience.

What if something happened to someone that you love?  Would the last words that you spoke to them be words that you would want to remember?  See to it that whenever you tell your husband or wife goodbye in the morning that you exchange pleasant words, not impatient words, not fretful words. 

I’m not saying this to be negative or sarcastic, but it’s just facing the facts that, in this world, none of us knows how long we will have our loved ones.  We don’t know these things, so we need to take advantage of the opportunity that we have.  We need to take advantage while we have the opportunity to give love and sympathy and affection to the people in our family.

Let me read a statement to you from the pen of Ellen White that is very appropriate along these lines.  This is what she wrote in the June 22, 1886, Review and Herald: “Home should be made all that the name implies.  It should be a little heaven upon the earth, a place where the affections are cultivated instead of being studiously repressed.  Our happiness depends upon this cultivation of love, sympathy, and polite courtesy to one another.  The reason why there are so many hard-hearted men and women in our world, is because true affection has been regarded as weakness, and has been discouraged and repressed.  The better part of the nature of those of this class was perverted and dwarfed in childhood; and unless rays of divine light can melt away their coldness and hard-hearted selfishness, the happiness of such is buried forever.  If we would have tender hearts, such as Jesus had when he was upon the earth, and sanctified sympathy, such as the angels have for sinful mortals, we must cultivate the sympathies of childhood, which are simplicity itself.  Then we shall be refined, elevated, and directed by heavenly principles.”  We need to express love and affection in our homes so that our children don’t grow up to be hard-hearted.

Did you get it?  If we don’t express love and affection at home, what is going to happen to our children?  They will grow up hard-hearted.  Well, we need to think about that.  What kind of words are we speaking with our spouse, with our children, with our brothers, with our sisters?

I was on my way to the jail Sunday morning, and all this was going over in my mind, and I needed to get it out of my mind, because I was going to the jail to visit people who were already in plenty of trouble.  I had taught and preached at this jail for quite some time.  A Sunday morning worship service was held in the different cellblocks.  There were between 15 and 25 people in each cellblock.  At night they would be locked up in individual cells, and then in the day time they would be let out to the bigger room, and we would go there to sing with them, read the Bible, and teach them the gospel.  We would be on one side of the bars; the prisoners would be on the other side of the bars, and anybody who wanted to come could come.  Nobody had to come, but some prisoners always would come, and we would teach the gospel to them and appeal to them to give their hearts to Christ.

Out of that jail ministry there were people that accepted Christ.  There were some that became Seventh-day Adventists, and I was going there to be an encouragement to them, to cheer them.  Jesus did that.  Remember when his disciples were troubled and He was going to go away, He said to them, “Let not your heart be troubled, you believe in God, believe also in Me.  In My Father’s house there are many mansions, if it wasn’t so I would have told you.  I’m going, and I’m going to prepare a place for you, and I will come again and receive you to Myself that where I am ye may be also.”  John 14:1–3.

We used to quote those promises to the people in the prison and tell them that if they were saved and they were going to heaven, there were no jails in heaven—there wouldn’t be any hospitals in heaven; they wouldn’t have any trouble in heaven.  They liked to hear about heaven.  I can still remember some of their favorite songs.  One of their favorite songs that they asked to sing over and over again was called “There’s Power in the Blood.”  Do you know that song? 

Jesus comforted His disciples when they were in trouble.  In II Corinthians 1 the apostle Paul talks about how he tried to comfort people that were in any kind of trouble.  Christians should be able to comfort people that are in jail and give them hope, don’t you think so?

When we go to visit someone in prison, they should feel encouraged after we leave, because there is hope.  Let me tell you, friend, there are going to be millions of people that are saved out of prisons.  Because of the nature of my work after I left Southwestern Adventist College, started working for the Texas Conference, and now working for Steps to Life, I cannot be involved in a prison ministry like I was at that time.  If you have opportunity to get involved in prison ministry, do it.  It’s a very fruitful field of evangelism, and remember, the people that are in prison have relatives that are outside of prison, so you can get in contact with a lot of people by being in contact with prisoners.

Right now in our Bible Correspondence School we are giving Bible lessons to prisoners all over the country.  In fact, right now there is a prisoner that has been taking Bible studies, and he has given his heart to the Lord.  He has told us, “I want to be trained as a minister, and when I get out of prison, I’m going to become a self-supporting minister.  I will go to any place in Africa that you want to send me, and it won’t cost you any money.  I will support myself.”  And he has the skills that he can support himself.  That is an example of what’s happening to a prisoner right now. 

At Steps to Life, we have a course that will give people academic training to become ministers.  It’s a six-unit course with about 800 pages of material. It’s a basic course.  We hope to enlarge it later, but we have a basic course that will teach people about evangelism and Bible doctrines and what to teach and how to preach, so they can become ministers.  This prisoner wants to take this course and become a minister.

By the way, there are a lot of people in prison that have some rare talents.  There are a lot of people in prison less guilty than a lot of people out on the street.  The prison is a very fruitful field for evangelism and we should be exploiting that field much more than we are.

So, I was on my way to the jail, and I could not stop thinking about this friend of mine and his wife that had just died and how her two girls, less than 10 years of age, would miss her and her baby boy would not remember his mother, and how empty and sad the house felt when I was in it.  All of this kept going around in my mind.  Usually I’m not a morbid person, but that morning I couldn’t shake it.  I couldn’t get all these thoughts out of my mind. 

Although I always tried to be cheerful, when I went up into the cell block that morning to talk to the prisoners, my face gave me away.  As soon as I walked in, one of the prisoners that I knew quite well, because I had presented the gospel to him a number of times, looked straight at me and said, “What’s the matter with you, preacher?  What’s happened to you?” 

I felt really embarrassed, and I thought, I’m supposed to be here to encourage these people; I’m not supposed to be here to tell them my troubles.  But he had asked me a direct question, and I was not going to tell a lie.  So I decided I would have to tell him what had happened to this young woman and what my thoughts had been as I drove to the jail that morning.

When I told the story, that whole cellblock became very quiet.  I wasn’t talking to everybody; I was just talking to the man that asked me the question, but everybody else was listening.  I came right up to the bar, and this prisoner came right up to the bar on the other side.  He looked up into my face, and he began to tell me the story of his life.

He said, “I have two older sisters, and when I was two years old, my mother died from cancer.  She was only 29 years old.”  Then he said, “When my mother died, my father couldn’t take it.  He became an alcoholic.  Then there was nobody to take care of my sisters and me.  We were separated.  My two sisters were taken somewhere, and I was taken to an orphanage in Fort Worth, Texas.  I was raised there.” 

I had presented the gospel to this man a number of times and had never gotten a response from him.  All of a sudden I understood what had happened to this man as a boy.  He had grown up without any mother to love him.  I’m not criticizing the people in the orphanage.  I’m sure they were doing the best they could.  They always provided him with food and clothing, but the people managing an orphanage cannot take the place of a mother.  So this man grew up without a mother’s love; he grew up without that tenderness. 

Do you remember what we read earlier?  What did Ellen White say the reason was that there are so many hard-hearted men and women?  When they were growing up, there was nobody that could express love and sympathy and affection to them.  They grew up without that tenderness, that kindness, that love.  Oh, friend, don’t let any of your children grow up that way.

This prisoner grew up in an orphanage.  His mother was dead; his father was an alcoholic as a result.  He became hard-hearted, and when he became a man, he got in trouble with the law and now he was in jail.

I had presented the gospel to him more than once, but I’d never been successful.  Now the Lord had done something for me; He had given me the key to this prisoner’s heart.  He had told me the story of his life.  I want to tell you, friend, if you are working for somebody and you have never been able to reach them, you have never touched them, you need to pray and say, Lord, if it is your will, give me the key to their heart.  When you have the key to their heart, they will respond.  I had the key to this man’s heart now.  He’d opened up to me.

Psalm 126 talks about the people who go out weeping but sowing seed and who are going to come back rejoicing with their sheaves.  Although everyone else was listening, I was talking only to this man, and I was pretty sure I had the key to his heart, so I asked him a set-up question.  You know what a set-up question is don’t you?

A set-up question is the question you ask to get the person ready for the real question.  Anybody that’s been in sales has learned to ask set-up questions.  There’s nothing wrong with asking a set-up question; you are just getting the person ready for the real question. 

I asked him, “Was your mother a Christian?” 

He said, “Yes, my mother was a Bible-believing Christian.”  He knew that because his older sisters later on had told him.  Now he was ready for the real question.

I asked, “Would you like to see your mother again someday?”

“Yes,” he said, “I would.”

“You can!” I told him, and I began to tell him how that could happen.  I said, “Someday Jesus is going to come back to this world; He is going to come back from heaven.  The Bible says every eye is going to see Him, and when He comes back, He is going to look down on this world and say, ‘Awake, awake, awake, you that sleep in the dust and arise.’  It talks about this in Isaiah 26:19.  It says, ‘Awake you that sleep in the dust, awake and sing.’  When Jesus says that, your mother is going to awake and come out of the grave.  She is going to look for you, and if you surrender your heart and life to Jesus, you are going to be there.”

By the way, friend, let me ask you something.  When Jesus comes, is there anyone who is going to wake up and look for you?  Are you going to be there?  If you are there, then they are going to sing.  It says so in Isaiah.  If you are not there, then maybe they will cry. 

One of the persons that I believe will wake in the first resurrection and will look for me is my father.  My father died as a result of being hit by a car in April 2000.  I remember, when I was a small boy at home, hearing my father pray repeatedly during family worship that our family might be saved without the loss of one.  My father didn’t want anybody in his family to be lost.  He worked for all people; everywhere he lived in the world he worked for other people to try to get the gospel to them, but he always prayed that his family would be saved without the loss of one.

Who is going to look for you?  Are they going to sing?  Are they going to have a song in the night because you are there?

We read in Isaiah 30:29, 30 that the Lord says you are going to have a song in the night.  Isaiah 21:11, 12 talks about this night and also the day that is coming: “The burden of doom.  He calls to the watchmen, ‘Watchmen, what of the night?’  The watchman said, ‘The morning is coming and also the night.  If you will inquire, inquire; Return! Come!’ ”  What’s that talking about?  It says the morning is coming but also the night.  The night of sin, friend, is almost over, and the eternal morning is going to break very soon for the righteous.  It will be eternal night for the wicked.  So because the night of sin is about over and the morning is going to come soon, the watchman says, “If you will inquire, inquire; Return! Come!”

If you look at the context of this passage, you will see, in the earlier verses of Isaiah 21, that the context is the fall of Babylon.  The fall of Babylon, of course, is what happens at the end of the world.  You can read about it in Revelation 18.  When Babylon falls, the morning is coming.  That’s one of the reasons the people are going to sing, because the night is over.  They are going to have a song in the night, because the night is just about over and the eternal morning is coming.  But the night is coming also—the eternal night for the wicked.

A lot of things have been happening among God’s people recently.  First of all, we have in Adventism a great apostasy.  You know about that; we don’t have to talk about it, but that’s not all we are dealing with.  We also have to deal with fanaticism; do you know how dangerous fanaticism is?  Do you realize that Ellen White says that fanaticism almost destroyed the Reformation of the sixteenth century?  (See The Acts of the Apostles, 348.)  Fanaticism was considered even more dangerous for them than the papacy.  Do you think the devil has forgotten that, or do you think he still knows that?

We have apostasy and we have fanaticism and the Lord says the morning is coming.  The watchman says, the morning is coming; the night is coming.  “If you will inquire, inquire; Return! Come!”  Return from all this fanaticism, from all this apostasy, get back to primitive godliness.  Are some people going to return and come back?  Yes, they are.  I want to be part of it.

The Great Controversy, 464, says: “Before the final visitation of God’s judgments upon the earth there will be among the people of the Lord such a revival of primitive godliness as has not been witnessed since apostolic times.”

Would you like to be part of that?  That’s what has to happen in order for the night to end, and it’s at the end of the night that we are going to have the song. 

Come back, come back, the prophet says.  The watchman says, inquire, return, come back, come back to primitive godliness, or as Jeremiah puts it, seek for the old paths.  (Jeremiah 6:16)

What are the old paths?  What did Seventh-day Adventists used to believe?  Things used to be a lot different; I can remember.  We were already in apostasy when I was a young pastor.  I can remember that we used to read texts from the Bible in the New Testament like I Timothy 2: 9, 10 which forbids the use of the wearing of gold and pearls and costly array.  Have you read that?  We used to read that, and I remember, as a young pastor in the North Dakota conference, our conference president told us that we were not to baptize anyone with any jewelry on.  Do you know Adventists used to believe that?

I was forbidden as a young pastor to even baptize a woman that had on a wedding ring.  That was forbidden!  We used to have people in those days that didn’t become church members because they didn’t want to take off their jewelry.  That happened a lot, but we had some standards.  Now that is all changed.  I can remember when it changed.  I can remember the debate that happened and what the articles in the Review said and everything that went along with it.

People say that we were too strict and too straight-laced then.  Well, I’m sure we’ve made lots of mistakes; I know I’ve made lots of mistakes in presenting to people the standards in God’s Word.  Either we were wrong back then or we are wrong now in our basic position, and you need to decide in your own mind what you think is right and wrong when you read the Scriptures.  Were we wrong for 130 years and then finally got straightened out in 1983, or are we wrong now?

I Timothy 2:9, 10 always says the same thing every time I read it.  The watchman says, “If you will inquire, inquire; Return! Come!” and people say we have to go farther than the pioneers.  Let me tell you something, friend, we will never go farther than the pioneers if we don’t even get to the place where the pioneers were.

Have you ever read Philippians 4:8 recently?  Is it true?  In other words, if it’s fiction, don’t read it.

My mother went to a Seventh-day Adventist school and was severely disciplined for reading fiction.  In fact, the principal of the school told her, after he found out that she had read fiction, that he wanted her to read the entire book, The Desire of Ages.  He told her that if she understood that book she would never want to read fiction again.  She quit reading fiction.

People say that’s too narrow.  We just believe Philippians 4:8 literally and believe it means what it says.  By the way, that’s not the only text on that point.  There are lots of other texts.

We believe the Bible when David said: “I will not put any wicked thing in front of my eyes.”  Psalm 101:3.  Drama is the acting out of something that’s fiction almost every time, and the Spirit of Prophecy condemns drama in no uncertain terms and tells us that we shouldn’t have anything to do with it.  Seventh-day Adventists used to believe that and did not allow its young people to go to the theater.  I wonder, do you remember when Seventh-day Adventists said, you cannot be a Seventh-day Adventist and attend a theater?

When my mother was young, no Adventist went to the theater.  None!  That was forbidden, but now there is a theater right in most homes, and what can be seen in the home is much worse than what was in the public theater when my mother was young.  But, people say, we are just too narrow-minded.

Well, either we were dead wrong then or we are dead wrong now in our practice.  You will have to read the Word of God and decide which it is.  The watchman said, “If you will inquire, inquire; Return! Come!” 

There used to be a time—maybe it was somewhat over a hundred years ago—when Seventh-day Adventists believed in modesty.  Did you know that there was a time—I could tell you all sorts of incidents about this—when Seventh-day Adventists in its schools and its churches would never, ever condone anything like mixed swimming?  That was considered to be of the world—evil, wicked.  Were we right then or are we right now?

If you want to read what the Bible says about that, look at the last verse in Exodus 20, it talks about the priests; it’s talking there about men not about women.  The Lord was very strict with the priests.  He said, “If you display your nakedness, you’ll die.”  Read Leviticus 18.  That’s so plain about this subject that we don’t even read it in public, but it’s in the Bible.

There used to be a time when Seventh-day Adventists believed in strict Sabbath observance.  There is a verse in the Bible—and I was taught this text when I was a boy because my father and mother were Seventh-day Adventists—that says that on the Sabbath you are not to speak your own words.  You are not to go in your own ways, and you are not to do your own pleasure on the Sabbath, because that’s God’s day.  That is what it says in Isaiah 58:13, 14.

There used to be a time when Seventh-day Adventists used to be afraid of kingly power.  James White was very strong on this point.  He taught that we were all brethren.  He said the ministers were not to allow the conference to be a god to them; that’s wrong.  Did you know that James White taught that?

Seventh-day Adventists believed in New Testament church organization, but the church got away from that as soon as James White died.  Ellen White is quite clear on that if you read the 1888 material.

There used to be a time when Seventh-day Adventists did not engage in competitive sports.  Some people don’t even know that.  There used to be a time that what the worldly schools were doing, was not for us to do as Christians.  Do you know what Ellen White said when they decided to play cricket one day at the Avondale School in Australia?  They only did it one day.  She said they were practicing idolatry.  (See Ellen G. White, Volume 4, The Australian Years, 1891–1900, 442, 443.)  There was a time when we, as Adventists, said that we should not get involved in competing with one another or competing with other schools or all these things like the world does.

I’m not being sarcastic; I’m not trying to be common or vulgar either, but just to make you think, let me say it real quick and then get on to something else: They don’t play football in heaven!

There used to be a time when Seventh-day Adventists did not use fermented wine or alcoholic beverages for any reason at any time.  They didn’t take fermented wine and spike the punch or anything like that.  They said that was wrong.  Adventists used to teach that the Bible did not teach moderation in alcoholic beverages—it taught absolute abstinence.  I’m here to tell you that if you read the Bible in the Greek, in the New Testament you will see that it teaches abstinence from alcohol.  The Greek New Testament teaches abstinence from alcohol, it does not teach moderation, and whatever you’ve heard to the contrary, I can prove it to you if you want to know.  One verse would be Ephesians 5:18; I Corinthians 6:9, 10 would be another one; I Peter 5:8 would be another one.  There are about 20 verses altogether which speak of this.

Did you know that there was a time when the Seventh-day Adventist Church did not have the strife among its members that it has today?  Why was that?  Proverbs 13:10 tells us why.  The Bible tells us there is only one thing that causes strife, that’s pride.  Nobody that has pride is going to go to heaven. 

Malachi 4:1 says that all the proud are going to burn up.  Nobody with pride is going to go to heaven.  It is only because of pride that we have strife.  That’s what Proverbs teaches over and over again.

The watchman says, “If you will inquire, inquire; Return! Come!”  Come back to primitive godliness.  We need to pray for humility among us so that we can have a difference of opinion and still not fight.  We can think, and as long as people think, people will have differences of opinion.  That will always be, but we don’t need to fight.  When we get to the place where we don’t have pride, we won’t have strife. 

There used to be a time in the Seventh-day Adventist Church that the week before communion, members would investigate their lives and ask, “Is there any contention, is there any trouble between me and some other brother or sister in the church?”  If there was any trouble or variance, the member would go to that person and confess it, and they would pray together and make it right.  We still, in our church, announce communion a week before for this very purpose.  Guess what?  When you have a church full of people that, before they go to communion, clear all variances and make things right, you begin to have brotherly love in that church.  We need that back again.

There has to be someone, friend, that has a song in the night.  As the night draws to an end, we have been promised that.  We read it in Isaiah 30, and it’s mentioned also in Isaiah 26:19.  The Lord is coming.  He is going to end this night of sin, and we are going to have a song.  But the people that have the song are going to be the people that before hand had an experience in primitive godliness.  I want to be part of that people; I want to be part of that song, do you?

When the Lord comes and calls the people out of their graves and the people are shouting and singing, I want to be shouting and singing, too, do you?  If we are going to be shouting and singing at that time, we are going to have to learn some primitive godliness first.