James White on 3rd Angel's Message SERIES: Laodiceans

"In the language of Elijah, we would say, 1 Kings 18:21 How long halt you between two opinions? If the Lord be God, then follow Him [break away from your idolatry, and keep God’s Holy Sabbath];

but if Baal, then follow him [keep his Sunday]. 

Q: Do you answer, that you are not following Balaam, because you do not keep Sunday? 

--This will avail you nothing. If you continue to defile the Sabbath, you will be cut off from among His people, and surely be put to death, by the seven last plagues. 

O you Laodiceans, to you is the word of this salvation sent. No longer halt between two opinions." 

James White

Jeremiah on the Laodicean State of the Church

 

Neither say they in their heart, 

Let us now fear the LORD our God, 

that giveth rain, both the former and the latter, in his season: 

he reserveth unto us the appointed weeks of the harvest. 

Your iniquities have turned away these things, 

and your sins have withholden good things from you. 

For among my people are found wicked men: 

they lay wait, as he that setteth snares; 

they set a trap, they catch men. 

     The prophets prophesy falsely, 

         and the priests bear rule by their means; 

and my people love to have it so: 

and what will ye do in the end thereof?

Jeremiah 5:24-26,31

The Severe Testimony of The True Witness

"Says the True Witness: “I know thy works.” The motives, the purposes, the unbelief, the suspicions and jealousies may be hid from men, but not from Christ. The True Witness comes as a counselor: ‘I counsel thee to buy of Me gold tried in the fire, that thou mayest be rich; and white raiment, that thou mayest be clothed, and that the shame of thy nakedness do not appear; and anoint thine eyes with eyesalve, that thou mayest see. As many as I love, I rebuke and chasten; be zealous therefore, and repent’”.

 (Testimonies, Vol. 3. p. 256)

 

"The gold that Jesus would have us buy of him is gold tried in the
fire; it is the gold of faith and love, that has no defiling substance mingled with it. 

The white raiment is the righteousness of Christ, the wedding garment which Christ alone can give. 

The eye-salve is the true spiritual discernment that is so wanting among us, for spiritual things must be spiritually discerned."

 (Review and Herald, September 16, 1873)

 

"The message to the church of the Laodiceans is a startling denunciation, and is applicable to the people of God at the present time."

 (Testimonies, Vol. 3, p. 252)

 

"What greater deception can come upon human minds than a confidence that they are right, when they are all wrong? 

The message of the True Witness finds the people of God in a sad deception, yet honest in that deception. 

They know not that their condition is deplorable in the sight of God. While those addressed are flattering themselves that they are in an exalted spiritual condition, the message of the True Witness breaks their security by the startling denunciation of their true situation of spiritual blindness, poverty, and wretchedness. 

The testimony, so cutting and severe, cannot be a mistake; for it is the True Witness who speaks, and his testimony must be correct."

 (Review and Herald, September 16, 1873)

Worst Type of Hostility Toward God

"Why did God say he would spew them out? 

Because Laodicea is in a neutral position, and they took a neutral position. “If God abhors one sin above another, of which His people are guilty, it is doing nothing in case of an emergency. Indifference and neutrality in a religious crisis is regarded of God as a grievous crime and equal to the very worst type of hostility against God” 3T, 281. 

 

The worst type of hostility 

against God is neutrality. 

 

Dear friend, that is what is viewed as good religion today – to accept anything and everybody — neutrality. 

 

We have such a pluralism of ideas in the church today that are all accepted and believed, that we are conditioned to be neutral on issues.....there is more hope for an open enemy than for one who is neutral."

JanaWagnar/StepsToLife

From Laodicea to the Loud Cry

"God wants to see His people transformed from being lukewarm to
being hot. 

Our Savior is attempting to bring us from the Laodicean experience of being “wretched, and miserable, and poor, and blind, and naked” (Revelation 3:17) and into the Loud Cry experience when God’s purified people will have “great power; and the earth was lightened with His glory” (Revelation 18:1)."

AdventMessenger

Laodicean Message in the Blind Man

"....John 9:41. It is at the end of the account of that man's healing

from the blindness and restoration of sight to the man that had been born blind. What does that verse say?

"Jesus said unto them, If ye were blind, ye should have no sin; but now you say, We see. Therefore your sin remaineth."

When Jesus tells you and me we are blind, the thing for us to do is to say, "Lord, we are blind."

He told those folks they were blind and they were blind, but they said it was not so. It was so. If they had confessed their blindness they would have seen God in that man's healing from his blindness. Well, then, brethren, the thing for us to do is to come square up to that Laodicean message and say that every word He says is so."
A.T.Jones