Everything that you own, as far as material possessions, in this world you will soon have to leave them and you will lose it all. But there are some things that you can develop, there are some things that you can acquire, there are some things that you can come into ownership of that you can take with you to heaven. Not material things, in fact, as far as material things we cannot even take our own body to heaven. That is very clear because the Bible says, in 1 Corinthians 15, that flesh and blood do not inherit the kingdom of God. None of us can go in, our present body, to heaven. That would be impossible. Before we go there, if you die and are raised up, you will be given a new body. And if you are alive when Jesus comes, the Scriptures say that He will transform our vile body into an image of His glorious body, in the twinkling of an eye.

So, there are no material things that we can take with us out of this world, but there are some things, not material things; but there are some things that we can take with us out of this world. I want to talk to you about one of those things this evening. It is something that we use commonly in our every day speech and yet there are many people, if you ask them, they could not define exactly what it is. It has a great deal to do with the plan of salvation and it is the conscience.

The New Testament talks a lot about the conscience. There are many kinds of consciences. The Bible talks about a good conscience, a pure conscience, a defiled conscience, a seared conscience, a conscience without offense, a cleansed conscience, a sprinkled conscience, and a perfected conscience. So the Bible has a lot to say about the conscience and the condition of a person's conscience. But before we look at what the Bible says about it, we are going to see that one of the reasons that this is an important subject to study is that the work that Jesus is doing in the heavenly sanctuary for you, right now, one of the principle things it has to do with is your conscience. Your conscience must be in a certain condition before probation closes if you are going to be saved. So, the condition of your conscience is very important.

But before we look at that, let's try to define just what the conscience is. If you were going to define what the conscience is, how would you define it in one sentence? Here is one definition that you can work with. The conscience is that faculty of your mind that tells you to do good and not to do evil. The conscience is located right up here in your forehead. We will not take time this evening to tell stories, there are some very interesting stories that I studied when I was going to graduate school about different injuries that people have had, some were from injuries, some from tumors developing in this part of the brain right up here in the forehead, and how that the conscience can be destroyed.

It is very interesting to study the life history of people who have had an injury and see what their peers and people who lived with them and knew them said about them before this injury and after the injury. It is very interesting to study, but we will not take time to tell any stories about that this evening.

The conscience is simply that faculty of your mind that tells you to do good and not to do evil. If you began then to do something that you believe is evil, what will your conscience do? It will protest and you will have what is called a guilty conscience.

Many people, for a subject like this, would like an inspired definition. So if you would like an inspired definition about the conscience, here is one. From Mind, Character and Personality, 322, 323. She is talking about this text of scripture in Matthew 6:22, 23. It says, Jesus is speaking, "The lamp of the body is the eye. If therefore your eye is. . ." The next word is difficult to translate. The New King James says good and the old King James says single. I have never figured out a perfect word to translate for the Greek word "haplous". It says, "If therefore your eye is good, your whole body will be full of light. But if your eye is bad, your whole body will be full of darkness. If therefore the light that is in you is darkness, how great is that darkness!" Now in commenting on this verse Ellen White says, "These words have a first and second sense, a literal and a figurative meaning. They are full of truth in regard to the bodily eye, with which we see external objects. And they are true also in regard to the spiritual eye, the conscience, with which we estimate good and evil. If the eye of the soul, the conscience, is perfectly healthy, the soul will be taught aright."

If your conscience is not healthy, it is like a person with their physical eye that cannot see clearly. If you cannot see clearly, that can be very serious, especially if you drive cars, fly airplanes, pilot ships, or engage in any kind of work with mechanical devices or power tools. Your eyes are very important to guide the entire body. The same way that your eyes guide your physical body, your conscience is the eye of your soul, and it guides your soul. If something is wrong with it, if you cannot see well, do you remember what Jesus said about those that were blind leaders of the blind? He said they would go into the ditch and the people that they hold onto, they will go into the ditch, too. If something is wrong with your conscience your soul will be led in the wrong way. Now there are many people who have a rather naive view of the conscience. They think that if their conscience tells them to do something or not to do something, therefore it has to be right or wrong. They do not realize that the conscience (just as the physical eye) must be educated. You see there is a reason that God gave the Bible; your conscience without the Bible is not enough. Your conscience has to be educated and if your conscience is educated from the wrong sources, your spiritual vision will be faulty and you will make bad decisions. Those kind of decisions involve your eternal destiny.

Remember your conscience just tells you to do good and to avoid evil. But what is good and evil? Well, that involves education. Let's read a couple of statements on that. Here is an interesting one. "But one says, 'My conscience does not condemn me keeping the commandments of God.' But in the Word of God we read that there are good and bad consciences and the fact that your conscience does not condemn you in not keeping the law of God, does not prove that you are not condemned in His sight. Take your conscience to the Word of God, and see if your life and character are in accordance with the standard of righteousness which God has there revealed." Review and Herald, September 3, 1901

So the conscience, by itself, unless it is educated or enlightened by the Word of God, cannot be depended on. You cannot depend on your conscience unless it is enlightened by inspiration, by God's Word. Here is another one. "It is not enough for a man to think himself safe in following the dictates of his conscience. . . . The question to be settled is, 'Is the conscience in harmony with the Word of God?' If not, it cannot safely be followed; for it will deceive. The conscience must be enlightened by God. Time must be given to a study of the Scriptures and to prayer. Thus the mind will be established, strengthened, and settled." Manuscript Releases, vol. 1, 392, 393. So the conscience, your conscience, tells you to do good and avoid evil, but you must have the Word of God so that you will know what that is.

Now, what happens if you violate your conscience? Your conscience tells you to do good and not to do evil, but your carnal nature is clamoring to do evil. We have what is known as a carnal, a sinful, or a fallen nature that must be crucified. What if I violate my conscience? Well, when I violate my conscience, my conscience will protest that violation and I will have a guilty conscience and I will not feel good. Have you ever talked to somebody who has a guilty conscience over something they have said or done? Your conscience can bother you so much that you cannot sleep at night. Your conscience can bother you so much that you lose your appetite and you cannot concentrate at your work. Your conscience can interfere with everything in your daily life so that you just cannot function very well. A conscience is very powerful. But sometimes we human beings get stubborn and we say, "But I want to."

We rationalize and we violate our conscience a second time. Now the second time that you violate your conscience doing the same thing that you did the first time, your conscience still protests, but something has happened in your heart so that that protest by your conscience does not bother you quite as much as it did the first time. And if you violate your conscience the third time, it will be easier than it was the second time. And if you keep violating your conscience, the time will come when you can do that thing that, sometime in the past it would have bothered you terribly, but it does not bother you any more. And when it gets so it does not bother you anymore, that is when you are in a dangerous position. Because it does not bother you anymore.

I could tell you so many stories about this. We human beings are creatures of habit. I remember a man that attended our evangelistic meetings. He and his wife were coming to church every Sabbath. I was giving them Bible studies, but the time came that they decided to stop. I guess, he would never tell me for sure. He never disagreed; he knew what the truth was and he believed it but he decided not to follow it. So I went to his house one evening. Open your Bibles to Hebrews 3 and I will show you the passage of Scripture that I studied with this man. Hebrews 3:7, 8, "Therefore, as the Holy Spirit says: 'Today, if you will hear His voice, do not harden your hearts as in the rebellion.' "

Now, how do you harden your heart? The way you harden your heart is you do something or you think something or you say something that you know is wrong and your conscience protests, but you want to do it so badly that you do it anyway. And the second time you do it, your heart is going to be a little more callused. It will not bother you quite as much. And the third time it will not bother you near as much and after you have done it a few dozen or a few hundred times, you will be able to do it without even thinking.

Now, here is the really bad part of it. When you do that with a little sin, a little problem, the time will come when you will be able, then, to do it with a bigger problem. So I told this man to be careful. You see, he was now starting to break the Sabbath. He was doing something that he knew was wrong. I remember the story of a dentist. I never knew this man though I know his daughter, but this man in fact lived in Montana when this story happened. When he first learned about the Sabbath because he had promised his wife's mother when she was dying, she made him promise her two things. She said, "Promise me you will go to church every Sunday and promise me that you will read the Bible." So he promised. What are you supposed to do when your wife's mother is dying and she asks you to promise her something. So he promised. But he was good to his word and started going to church every Sunday and he bought a Bible. And his wife was happy because she was religious and he had not been a religious person prior to that time.

She was happy until one day he came to his wife. See he had gotten a Bible and since he had gotten one he thought he ought to read it. He read it just the way he read every other book. He just started at the beginning and started reading. Pretty soon he got into Exodus. One day he comes to his wife and says, "How come we go to church on Sunday?" She did not know, everybody went to church on Sunday. He says to her, "Well, we are not going to church on the right day." She says, "You and I, we are not theologians. You better go down and talk to the preacher about it." This man was a dentist, he was educated. He said, "We don't need to go talk to the preacher. You and I are educated people and we can read. We don't need to go and ask somebody. This is what it says." She said, "Well, what does it say?" He read her the fourth commandment. He says, "Now look over there at the calendar on the wall. The seventh day is Saturday."

Now what was he supposed to do. He had promised his wife's mother before she died that he would go to church every Sunday and get a Bible. But now he had gotten a Bible, and had decided that his wife's mother, his wife and everybody else in the whole city in Montana where he was living was all mixed up. So he decided to quit going to church even though he had promised. He said, "It's not the right thing to do." So he quit. But you know, in the town where he was, Saturday was the busiest day of the week for a dentist, all the farm people came in.

The next Sabbath, when he was in his office working, he had a terrible time. You know what gave him the terrible time? His conscience. And he had a lot of work to do; he had a lot of patients to see. And all the time he was trying to concentrate on his work as a dentist and you know what was happening in his mind? He was hearing a voice in his mind, the voice of his conscience, and that voice said, "The seventh day is the Sabbath. In it you shall not do any work." And here he was working. The next Sabbath the same thing happened. All day long he could not concentrate on what he was doing at all. Here was the busiest day of the week. That was when you made your money in those days because that was when all the farm people came into town. But his conscience bothered him so much, I think it was on the second Sabbath, he went and he made a sign and he posted the sign on the outside of his office door and it said, "This office is closed on Saturday." His office nurse wondered what in the world had happened to this man. But he was the boss, it was his office, so he closed his office.

From then on, he just stayed home and on Sabbath he read his Bible. There was no church to go to. As far as he knew there was no one else in the whole world who knew about the Sabbath like he did, because he had gotten a Bible and read it. Just because everybody else was mixed up, he was going to do what was right. So he stayed home and read his Bible every Sabbath.

What caused that? It was his conscience. You see, that man still had one of the most valuable things that God has given to a human being. He had what we call a sensitive conscience. Is your conscience sensitive? It is if you have not abused it too much. One of the most terrible things, one of the most terrible consequences of sin, is that sin causes the conscience to be less sensitive, more hard. We become hardened in sin. It talks about this here in Hebrews 3. Notice what it says in verse 12, "Beware, brethren, lest there be in any of you an evil heart of unbelief in departing from the living God; but exhort one another daily, while it is called 'Today,' lest any of you be hardened through the deceitfulness of sin." And then he says in verse 15, "Today, if you will hear His voice, do not harden your hearts as in the rebellion." You see, if I abuse my conscience by doing something that I know is wrong, or following any practice that is wrong, I am in the process of hardening my heart.

So if you want to have a sensitive conscience, you know there is a song about making the conscience sensitive again. I do not remember the words of the song. It is written by Kurt Kaiser as I recall, talking about bringing back the springtime. If you study that song, what he is talking about is how he wants a sensitive conscience again like he used to have as a child. But many of us, our conscience has become hardened because we have violated it over and over.

I want to appeal to the young people that are here to make a covenant with the Lord and say, "Lord, help me to live up to what I know is right." Because if you do not, as you grow older, your conscience will become hardened. Let me just say something for the benefit of the young people, because some young people, I have found, have not thought this through. Young people want to be happy and that is perfectly right. In fact, God created the whole human family for happiness. That is why he created man and woman was for happiness. You can read that in Christ's Object Lessons, around page 290. But I want you to think through something. All happiness, all joy, all pleasure depends on sensitivity.

Now, let's just think that through a little bit, in the physical world, so that you will understand it very clearly. Some of you here like music, don't you? How much can you enjoy music as your hearing gets worse. You see, your ability to enjoy music depends on the sensitivity of the ear. Is that correct? Now as people get older, oftentimes the higher vibrations or, we used to call it cycles per minute now we call it hertz, the high numbers of hertz between 15 and 20,000 they cannot hear it anymore. Well, when you cannot hear something anymore, you cannot enjoy it no matter how beautiful it is. You cannot enjoy it.

The same is true with the eye. Most of us take our eyes for granted unless we have had some problem. When I was a teenager there was a time when I had a problem. Physicians for quite a while could not figure out what the problem was except that I was losing my sight. I had to stay mostly in bed for a whole summer and have my eyes shut most of the time because the light irritated my eyes, so I had to keep my eyes shut almost all summer long. I had to just lay in bed and keep my eyes shut. And as long as I live, as long as I can see, I can tell you every day that I can see, I appreciate vision because I know what it is like to have to keep your eyes shut and not be able to see very well and no physician being able to figure out exactly what is wrong with you or why you cannot see. So I appreciate vision and all of the beautiful things that God has made and the beautiful artwork that human beings have made. Everything beautiful, to appreciate it, depends on the sensitivity of the eye.

And then, how about the food that you eat. You know God could have made it so that we would eat like the astronauts have to eat. You get your food in kind of a toothpaste tube and you just squeeze it in and swallow it, and that is it. But God gave to you sensitivity in the tongue, why? So that you could enjoy, but that enjoyment depends on that sensitivity. So you see, even in the physical world, if you lose sensitivity, you lose your capacity for enjoyment. Does that make sense?

Let me tell you something. That is true in the spiritual world, too. And if you lose this sensitivity of the conscience, you have lost one of the most wonderful gifts that God has given to the human family and that is one of the most awful things about sin. It is one of the great reasons, young people, that you should make a decision when you are young that you are not going to have anything to do with sin.

Let me tell you an awful fact that we do not like to face very often, but it is the truth. If you live a life of sin, there are a lot of young people that the devil is trying to deceive to think that you can live a life of sin and you can enjoy the pleasures of sin for a while and then after a while you can come to God and be forgiven. Let me tell you something. When you go through life and you enjoy the pleasures of sin, even if you come back to the Lord (the dangerous thing is that a lot of people do not come back to the Lord) but even if you come back to the Lord in later life, you will have lost something and you will have lost it for eternity. We do not like to face that. A lot of people like to think that when God forgives you, everything will be made just as it was before, but it is not so. One of the things that you lose by a life of sin is the sensitivity of the conscience. Ellen White says that the effects of that go on into eternity. That is why you want to choose to leave the life of sin now before your conscience has become damaged and distorted.

I have some statements here about this, but I think that we will not take time to read them. One or two? Well, here is one from Fundamentals of Christian Education, 143, 144. This is a way that your conscience can be partially destroyed. "Satan sees that he cannot have so great power over minds when the appetite is kept under control as when it is indulged, and he is constantly working to lead men to indulgence. Under the influence of unhealthful food, the conscience becomes stupefied, the mind is darkened, and its susceptibility to impressions is impaired. But the guilt of the transgressor is not lessened because the conscience has been violated till it has become insensible." So, what do you do?

Maybe there is somebody here and you are saying, "Pastor John, you are giving me terrible news. I am not one of the younger people here, I'm one of the older people here. And I know that in my past I have violated my conscience and maybe now my conscience is very hard. What am I going to do?" Do you know what one of the best things about the gospel is? No matter how bad the situation, if you surrender your life to the Lord, God will do everything in your life that it is possible for God to do to straighten things out.

Here is a statement that Ellen White wrote to a person that was living in sin. They were living in violation of the seventh commandment and they had been for a long time. They had been violating their conscience so long that they had become hard. Notice what she says to this person, "Now you have no hope; you are without God; and yet [that is in their present condition] Jesus of Nazareth passeth by. Will you now cry to God with a broken, repentant heart, 'Jesus of Nazareth, have mercy on me'? I press this matter upon your conscience. May God urge it upon your soul with arguments of mighty power. Oh, that the blind may see the solemnity of eternal judgment, and deepen the appeal that I make to you at this time. I am writing in the early morning hours, while all the house are locked in slumber. Be not determined to be lost. You cannot comprehend what a terrible thing it is to be lost. Your conscience has become hardened in sin and transgression and unbelief; but you may, if you will, fall on the Rock Christ Jesus and be broken before it is utterly too late, crying, 'Jesus of Nazareth, have mercy on me.' If you do this, God will not leave you to perish. . ." Testimonies on Sexual Behavior, Adultery and Divorce, 144, 145

Isn't that good news? If you have a hardened conscience, do not depend on your conscience, just do what the Bible says. Come to Jesus and say, "Lord, I am choosing to surrender all to you now. I don't want my conscience to get any more hard." And if you will come on the basis of the Word of God and claim the promises, He will work a miracle in your life.

We are not going to talk about Protestantism. If you have read the book The Great Controversy, this is one of the great issues in the book The Great Controversy. This is one of the great issues in the Protestant reformation, is that every person had a conscience that he was responsible to God himself and this is the New Testament teaching. You can find it in Romans 14. We answer to God for our self. We each one have to give an answer to God. This is going to be an issue at the end of the world. The Great Controversy, 589-591 talks about this. At the end of the world the governments of the world are going to make laws. Every government of the world is going to be involved. Ellen White says they will make laws to try to control the conscience. But if you allow somebody else to control your conscience, you will be lost. For your conscience, you are answerable to God alone for yourself.

Now, we have all sinned and when we sin, we have a guilty conscience. The purpose of the gospel is to take away the guilt and to restore a good conscience. Your conscience can never be restored so that you have a good conscience or a pure conscience unless you are living in harmony with the law of God. That cannot happen. If you study your Bible, remember the conscience has to be guided by the Word. That is how the conscience becomes enlightened or educated.

I want to study with you for a few minutes the conscience in the context of the heavenly sanctuary. This is a very interesting study. If you will turn in your Bible to the book of Hebrews and we will look first of all in the ninth chapter, verse 9. Now here it is talking about the ceremonial law, the earthly sanctuary, the earthly priesthood, and the old covenant. This is what it says about the earthly sanctuary and the old covenant. "It was symbolic for the present time in which both gifts and sacrifices are offered which cannot make him who performed the service perfect in regard to the conscience." You could go through all of those ceremonies and those sacrifices and those rites, but those things could not perfect your conscience. That was not an end unto itself, as many of the Jews got to think.

Look what he says in chapter 10. He says, "For the law, having a shadow of the good things to come, and not the very image of the things, can never with these same sacrifices, which they offer continually year by year, make those who approach perfect." That is the ceremonial system. "For then would they not have ceased to be offered? For the worshipers, once purified, would have had no more consciousness of sins."

Now let's think that through. You come to the sanctuary because you sin. You bring a sacrifice and the sacrifice is offered and you confess your sins over the head of that sacrifice and either the blood or part of the sacrifice is taken into the holy place, the first apartment of the heavenly sanctuary. But then, on the Day of Atonement, you must come and afflict your soul around the sanctuary on the tenth day of the seventh month. You must afflict your soul because that is when you are going to be cleansed from your sins. Now let's think this through. What does it mean to be cleansed from sin? If you understand what we are studying about, the conscience, you will understand it. If you are really cleansed from your sins, what does it say in Hebrews 10:2? You will have no more what? You will have no more consciousness of sin. Your conscience will tell you that you are not a sinner anymore, you have been cleansed. That is what it means to be cleansed from sin. Your conscience has been perfected, you are cleansed, purified from sin.

Now, if you are purified from sin and, you have no more consciousness of sin, then during the next year, would you come with a sin offering, if your conscience is cleansed and purified from sin, would you come with a sin offering? Well, no. You do not have to come with a sin offering. Well, now if nobody in all of the children of Israel came with a sin offering the next year, what would they do on the Day of Atonement the next year? They would not have it. You see, if no one had brought a sin offering all through the year, there would be no need to have a Day of Atonement. That is exactly what the apostle Paul is saying here. He said if they had really done the job, "would they not have ceased to be offered? For the worshipers, once purified, would have had no more consciousness of sins. But in those sacrifices there is a reminder of sins every year. For it is not possible that the blood of bulls and goats could take away sins." That is not possible. It is a symbol, a type, or an illustration, but it cannot really do it. If you are really cleansed from sin, you are living without sinning. And if you are not living without sinning, you are not really cleansed from sin yet. You still have consciousness of sin. Your conscience is not yet perfected. That is why Jesus came, not just to take away the guilt. Now guilt affects the conscience. It can affect it so bad that you cannot eat or sleep, but Jesus did not come just to take away the guilt, He came to cleanse or purify your conscience from sin-- to take it away. And when that is done, you see, if the sin is taken away, you are living without sin, you have no more consciousness of sin anymore.

He says it over and over again here in chapter 10. Look at what he says starting in verse 5, "Therefore, when He came into the world, He said: 'Sacrifice and offering You did not desire. . .' " You see, God was not desiring for us to sin and confess, sin and confess, sin and confess. That is not the gospel. "But a body you have prepared for Me. In burnt offerings and sacrifices for sin You had no pleasure."

Why did God have no pleasure in that? Every time that God the Father saw one of those sacrifices what did it mean to Him? He knew that His Son was going to have to come down and die on the cross. Did He take pleasure in that? No. "Then I said, 'Behold I have come--In the volume of the book it is written of Me--To do Your will, O God.' "

What does God want us to do? Sin and confess, is that what? No, He wants us to learn to do His will. "Previously saying, 'Sacrifice and offering, burnt offerings, and offerings for sin You did not desire, nor had pleasure in them.' (which are offered according to the law), then He said, 'Behold I have come to do Your will, O God.' He takes away the first that He may establish the second. By that will we have been sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all. . . .For by one offering He has perfected forever those who are being sanctified." Hebrews 10:5-10, 14

So, the book of Hebrews shows that through the offering of the blood of Christ, through what He does for me in the heavenly sanctuary, is to have an effect greater than to just forgive my guilt, but it is to actually take the power of sin out of my life. I am to become sanctified. In fact, it is in the book of Hebrews that you will find in chapter 13, verse 12, it says, "Therefore Jesus also, that He might sanctify the people with His own blood, suffered outside the gate." That text shows that the sacrifice of Jesus was not just for your justification, but it was to be for your sanctification, for your perfection; so that your conscience could be perfected. Now he sums this up before he actually gets to Hebrews 10, he tells us first in Hebrews 9:14. He says in verse 13, "For if the blood of bulls and goats and the ashes of a heifer, sprinkling the unclean, sanctifies for the purifying of the flesh, how much more shall the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit, offered Himself without spot to God, cleanse your conscience from dead works to serve the living God?"

The conscience is to be cleansed. Your conscience can never be cleansed until the power of sin is taken out of your life and you are living in harmony with God's will. Oh, friends, think this through. There is coming a time when Jesus is going to lay down the censor. He is not going to be the Mediator, the High Priest, anymore. He is going to take those garments off and put on His kingly garments and come back to this world. And when probation closes, before probation closes, this work we have been reading about here in Hebrews 9 and 10, involving the perfecting of the conscience, has to occur in every person's life that is going to live to see Jesus come and go to heaven.

Oh, friends, as I have thought about it and as I have studied it, I have realized that I need a work of grace in my heart that is actually beyond what I can even comprehend. And I have said, "Lord,"(I don't know about you, friend, but in my devotions and when I have thought this over, I have realized that there is a lot involved in the plan of salvation that I do not understand. And I have said,) "Lord, I don't understand all about this." By the way, when you get into Hebrews 9 and 10 you are dealing with some things that I have never seen anybody that can explain it all and I certainly cannot.

But I want this to happen in my life. I want my conscience to be cleansed. Do you know that during the time of trouble, Ellen White is very clear in The Great Controversy that they will have no more consciousness of sin; their sins have been blotted out. I want that experience, do you?

There are many other things that I have written down here in regard to the conscience, the danger of trying to control each other's consciences, which we are never, ever to do. Ellen White, some her strongest testimonies given after 1888, that was one of our biggest problems in 1888. That was one of our biggest problems in our whole organizational work. She wrote that even if you are the president of the General Conference or a president of a smaller conference or an elder or a deacon or a lay member of the church, if you try to control somebody else's conscience, you are out of line. That is for everybody. I am not to try to control anybody else's conscience, but I am to seek God with sincerity and humility and ask God to work the change in my conscience that has to be worked out, the cleansing that has to happen so that I will be ready for the judgment.

Oh, friends, do not think that if somebody is an elder or has been a Christian a long time or a preacher that they are any different than you are. Let me tell you, we all have to have the same gospel do the same work in our hearts if we are going to be saved. It is like Robert E. Lee said one time, "The ground is very level at the foot of the cross." I want this work, this cleansing of the conscience, to take place in my life.

Your conscience has to be educated according to the Word of God. If there is somebody here tonight, and the Holy Spirit is telling you, and you realize that there is some truth in inspired writings and you have not been following, you are never going to have a sensitive conscience, you are never going to have a clear conscience, you are never going to have a pure conscience, unless your life is in harmony with everything that you know is right. It is not going to happen.

Why don't you make a decision tonight, if the Holy Spirit is speaking to you. If you realize that there is something in your life that is not in harmony with God's Word, won't you make a covenant with the Lord tonight? It is not between you and me. In fact, and I say this respectfully for the marriage relation, but Ellen White tells us very clearly that the husband is not going to have to answer for the wife and the wife is not going to have to answer for the husband. The condition of your conscience you are going to have to answer to the Lord yourself. That is one of the reasons, by the way, that we are never to try to be conscience for each other because each of us has to answer for ourselves to the Lord.

Oh, friend, how is it with your conscience tonight? If Jesus should come tonight, or if you should die tonight, can you say in your soul, "Lord, I know that I need grace, but as far as I know, my life is in harmony with Your Word, as far as I know." Or is there something in your life, about the way you are living, that your conscience is guilty tonight? And the longer that goes on, the more your conscience will become hardened. Maybe your conscience has been so hardened already that you have not even thought about it for a long time. But right tonight, the Holy Spirit is speaking to your heart and you remember something that you have been doing now for a long time. Maybe the Holy Spirit is speaking to your heart and telling you that you need to straighten this out, you need to change this. You know, friends, this is one of the reasons, so often, that our prayers are not answered. We are not living according to what we know and God cannot work for us. The Bible says that if I regard iniquity in my heart, what will happen? The Lord will not hear me. Oh, friend, are you in a condition so that your conscience is clear so that you can walk close with the Lord and you can see Him work in your life?

See this is one of the reasons that there are many people that think that the Christian religion is not real and that God does not work for them and their prayers do not get answered. But the reason is, not because God will not work for them, it is because their conscience is not clear and they are not living up to what they know is right. God cannot work for them because He would be dishonoring His own name if He did. He would be promoting sin. If the Holy Spirit is speaking to your heart tonight, won't you say, "Yes Lord, I'm surrendering everything to You. I'm going to change."

There was a young man, I knew him, he was studying his Bible and praying hours every day because he had problems in his life, multiple problems. You know what multiple problems are. You know people who have multiple problems. They are all over the world today. But this man was a Seventh-day Adventist and he was having multiple problems, problems in his home, problems with his carnal nature, problems with substance abuse of various kinds. He was praying and studying and praying and studying and he was getting no answer. That is when people are tempted to wonder if God is real. And one day, the Holy Spirit spoke to him, I believe, as he was thinking things over, he realized all the things that he knew were wrong that he was doing. And he made a covenant with the Lord and said, "Lord, I am going to try my best to do everything that I know is right." Now he did not know everything, but he decided that everything he knew he was going to try to do what was right. Do you know what happened? In a matter of a few weeks, the Lord answered his prayer. That does not mean that he had no problems, but the problems he had were gone. And I want to tell you they were severe problems. I have seen this happen. I remember there was a young man who came to our Bible Worker Training school a few years ago and he had a problem. His problem was alcohol. Had I known that he had that kind of a problem, he never would have been there. But he did not tell me until after he was already there. Then he came to us and told us that he had this problem, but he said he wanted to overcome it. We said alright and we got a group of people and we got around this young man and we prayed that the Lord would deliver him from alcohol. He was violating his conscience. He was doing something that he knew was wrong. But I knew within a few days that he was not getting the answer to our prayers and I could not understand it. I knew that God would always answer a prayer like that and I could not comprehend what was going on. But I found a little later, do you know what happened? He had a little bottle of alcohol under the seat of his car just in case he got into a big emergency that was too big to handle. He got into those emergencies too big to handle just about every day. The Holy Spirit spoke to him one time, too. He told me about it later. He was driving his car and the Holy Spirit told him, (God hates pretense. Did you know that? He cannot stand it. And He will not work in your life if you are playing pretend. He will not do it. And you will wonder why religion does not work.) The Holy Spirit spoke to him and he realized he was not playing fair with God. He had asked God for something and then he really was not making the commitment. It bothered him so bad, he stopped the car right there at the side of the road, he reached down under the seat and got that bottle of alcohol and went around to the side of the car and he poured it out on the ground. And do you know what? Once he made the commitment, he had victory in his life.

Oh, friend, is there somebody here, your conscience has been violated. Maybe you think religion does not work. But I want to tell you, if you make the commitment, it does work because I have seen it work over and over again. And I know it will work if you make the commitment and you say to God, "Lord, I am surrendering everything to you and I am going to do everything that I know is right by Your grace."

I want to tell you, when you make a commitment with God like that, things will happen in your life and you will receive power and things will change. You will start having victory in your life, and when probation closes, you will have a cleansed and purified conscience. Do you want to have that experience? Probation is going to close soon, friend. When probation closes, do you realize that in just a little time, everybody in the world will wish that they had a conscience without offense. Paul said to the Jews that his conscience was without offense, it was a good conscience. Everybody in the world is going to wish that they had a conscience that was without offense. But there will only be a few people, comparatively, that will have it and I want to tell you, a good conscience at that time will mean to you eternal life. That is what it will mean.

Oh, friend, do you want your conscience to be purified? Do you want it to be cleansed? Do you want to be able to say like the apostle Paul said to the Jews, "I have lived in all good conscience until this day. I have lived with a conscience without offense." That is what the apostle Paul could really say. Do you want to be able to say, "Yes Lord, here I am. By Your grace, everything that I know that is in Your writings, my life is in harmony with every word." I have been praying to the Lord lately myself saying, "Lord, I want a life that is in harmony with every word that proceeds out of Your mouth." Do you want that?

Now a lot of the Christian world thinks we are crazy. But I am just simple enough to believe that if God says something, He will do it. I do not believe that God would tell us to do something like this if He was not going to do it; if we did our part and do not play games. I want to ask you, friends, do you want to make a commitment before you go home and say, "Lord, I'm really in earnest. I want a conscience that is pure, that is without offense. I do not want to be able to think of anything in my mind that I know I am living contrary to inspired Word. I want a conscience that is without offense." Do you want to be able to say that? Do you want that experience? If you are really serious and you want the Lord to give you that kind of experience, if you want Jesus in the most holy place to work in your behalf so that your conscience will be purified and cleansed, you will have no more consciousness of sins, if you want that experience, I want to invite you to kneel with me right now and pray and ask Him to give it to us.