THE GREAT CONTROVERSY: Audio & Pull Quotes- Chapter 21

A Warning Rejected

Audio:
https://www.youtube.com/embed/J8LCysCI4oI?list=PLA5C7629D1527F981

The first angel's message of Revelation 14, announcing the hour of God's judgment and calling upon men to fear and worship Him, was designed to separate the professed people of God from the

corrupting influences of the world and to arouse them to see their true condition of worldliness and backsliding. In this message, God has sent to the church a warning, which, had it been accepted, would have corrected the evils that were shutting them away from Him. Had they received the message from heaven, humbling their hearts before the Lord and seeking in sincerity a preparation to stand in His presence, the Spirit and power of God would have been manifested among them.
The church would again have reached that blessed state of unity, faith, and love which existed in apostolic days, when the believers were of one heart and of one soul, and spake the word of God with boldness, when the Lord added to the church daily such as should be saved. Acts 4:32, 31; 2:47....But the churches generally did not accept the warning.
In Revelation 14 the first angel is followed by a second proclaiming: Babylon is fallen, is fallen, that great city, because she made all nations drink of the wine of the wrath of her fornication. Revelation 14:8. The term "Babylon" is derived from "Babel," and signifies confusion. It is employed in Scripture to designate the various forms of false or apostate religion.
In Revelation 17 Babylon is represented as a woman --a figure which is used in the Bible as the symbol of a church, a virtuous woman representing a pure church, a vile woman an apostate church.
He who deliberately stifles his convictions of duty because it interferes with his inclinations will finally lose the power to distinguish between truth and error. The understanding becomes darkened, the conscience callous, the heart hardened, and the soul is separated from God.
--Where the message of divine truth is spurned or slighted, there the church will be enshrouded in darkness;
--faith and love grow cold, 
--and estrangement and dissension enter.
Church members center their interests and energies in worldly pursuits, and sinners become hardened in their impenitence.