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IMPORTANCE OF OUR SABBATH-SCHOOL LESSONS ON “THE NATURE OF MAN” AND “SPIRITUALISM.”

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Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Tuesday, February 17, 1885

FromThe Advent Review and Sabbath Herald, Vol. 62, No. 7

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IMPORTANCE OF OUR SABBATH-SCHOOL LESSONS ON “THE NATURE OF MAN” AND “SPIRITUALISM.”

By E. Hilliard

Perhaps but few of our people realize the great importance of our present Sabbath-school lessons. It has been remarked by many that the state of the dead, inasmuch as it is a question that does not affect the living, is an immaterial one. Satan never originates any harmless deception. The most baneful doctrines and the greatest delusions are made to appear by him as the least harmful.
The doctrine of natural immortality had its origin in the Garden of Eden. It was when the woman had received as truth the words of Satan, and firmly believed that she possessed an undying nature, that she fearlessly transgressed God’s command, and ate of the forbidden fruit. The deceiver’s subtle, lying words, “Thou shalt not surely die,” have ever since been received by the great masses as truth, even against God’s plain statement, “In the day thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.” Nearly six thousand years have passed away since our first parents became the victims of the father of lies. Now God is to take this, the last generation of men, back into the fields of Eden; and the tempter comes again, in person, as an angel of light declaring himself to be Christ. He will try to make it appear that our dead friends corroborate his lie that he told in Paradise.
Although so many centuries have passed since the fall of man, yet the unchangeable God demands unshaken faith in his written word. We are taken back into Paradise upon almost the same test, by which man was at first excluded. May God help us, both old and young, to so memorize the Scriptures contained in the lessons on the nature of man and spiritualism, that we may thereby be enabled to successfully meet the great deceiver.
E. Hilliard.