FROM YOUR PASTOR’S DESK:
APPETITE : THE KILLER TEMPTATION (Part 2)
Temptation is not sin; yielding to it, is. Appetite, desire, and passion are not evil in and of themselves. However, when these are uncontrolled by a carnal mind, unconverted heart, and a compromised conscience, they are the very hotbeds of activity where Satan and his agencies, demons and human beings, bag their greatest success and victims, both willing of duped or coerced.
Appetite, according to Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary, 5th edition, 1942, means: “To strive for; long for.
1. An inherent or habitual desire of body or mind; craving.
2. Desire for or relish of, food or drink. Synonyms: Longing, hunger, passion.” Now this:
“[See first part]. All these weight of woe and accumulated woe and suffering can be TRACED TO the indulgence of appetite and passion. LUXURIOUS LIVING and the use of wine corrupt the BLOOD, inflame the PASSIONS, and produce DISEASES of every kind. But the EVIL does not end here. PARENTS leave maladies as a LEGACY to their children.
“As a rule, every INTEMPERATE man/woman who rears children TRANSMITS his inclinations to and evil tendencies to his offspring. [“Like father like son; like mother like daughter”]; he gives them disease from his own inflamed and corrupted BLOOD. [Remember, ‘life is in the blood,’ Lev. 17:11].
LiCENTIOUSNESS, DISEASE, IMBECILITY are transmitted as an INHERITANCE OF WOE from father to son [from mother to daughter] FROM GENERATION TO GENERATION, and this brings anguish and suffering to the WORLD, and is no less a REPETITION of the fall of man!” – Vol. 4, Testimonies for the Church, p. 30.
Mankind, and the churches, in general, have not learned, refusing to honestly and thoroughly trace from cause to effect. That is why God, in both in the Old and New Testament times always has a “returning remnant” and a faithful minority who are “rebuilding the walls and repairing the breach” of the moral and physical laws of God’s spiritual kingdom on earth, as their “fitness” preparation for the eternal kingdom of glory.
It is my fervent hope, prayer, desire, and work to help prepare myself and others, who are willing, to be part of this “Lord’s army” and “little flock.”
(To be continued). Bless all, NMF
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APPETITE : THE KILLER TEMPTATION (Part 2)
