Prosperity Sometimes Causes Spiritual Downfall

Christ Triumphant - A Devotional by E.G. White

Prosperity Sometimes Causes Spiritual Downfall

Today's Text: Then I looked on all the works that my hands had wrought, and on the labour that I had laboured to do: and, behold, all was vanity and vexation of spirit, and there was no profit under the sun. Ecclesiastes 2:11

The Message:      Solomon wrote the book of Proverbs, but after a time his wisdom became mingled with chaff. Whence came the chaff? After a manhood of such glorious promise, a change came in Solomon's history. He did not continue true to his purity and allegiance to God. He broke through the barriers that God had erected to preserve His people from idolatry. The Lord had singled out Israel as a nation, making them the depositories of sacred truth to be given to the world. But Solomon cherished pride of political powers. He encouraged alliances with pagan kingdoms....      In the early part of his reign, Solomon was visited by the queen of Sheba. She came to see and hear his wisdom, and after she had heard him she said that the half had not been told her. But his wise and strictly just reign changed. He who had known God and the truth made a great outlay of means to please his godless wives. He made expensive gardens. God's money, which should have been held sacred to help the poor among the people, as God directed, was absorbed by the king's ambitious projects. It was diverted from its original channel.... The suffering ones were not given houses and food and clothing as God had specified they should be given. By his extravagant outlay of means Solomon sought to please his wives and glorify himself. Thus he used the means that had been abundant and brought a heavy taxation upon the poor....      His moral efficiency was gone, as the power is gone from a paralytic. He made an effort to incorporate light with darkness, to serve God and mammon. He felt at liberty to experiment in wild license. But Belial and purity could not mingle, and the course the king pursued brought its own penalty. He separated from God, and the knowledge of God departed from him....      People who have the use of money are to learn a lesson from the history of Solomon. Those who have a competence are in continual danger of thinking that money and position will ensure them respect and they need not be so particular. But self-exaltation is but a bubble. By misusing the talents given him, Solomon apostatized from God. When God gives people prosperity, they are to beware of following the imaginations of their own hearts, lest they endanger the simplicity of their faith and deteriorate in religious experience.-Manuscript 40, 1898.

Commentary: My friend, it is when we are prosperous that we are unguarded and open to the enemies attack.  It does not come in the form of a frontal assault, but subtly through the degrading of our morals.  As we associate with the world, we need to beware of its influence upon us.  God desires for us to live in the world, but not to become like them. When Solomon took to himself wives from the surrounding nations in an effort to cement political relationships with the world, he began to depart from the will of God.  Through these relationships he was lead step by step away from God until he was in openly worshiping their gods. The same is true today.  The Seventh-day Adventist church has for decades been consorting with the protestant churches and has been influenced by them.  The churches belief in the One true God and His Son Jesus Christ, which was held by our church pioneers, has been supplanted by the doctrine of the trinity, and like Solomon of old we have been corrupted by its unholy influence. The result of this departure from true holiness has lead us from the pure church of Philadelphia to the Laodecian church condition which is sickening to the Lord.  The reason why it is wretched, and miserable, and poor, and blind, and naked is because we have lost the righteousness of Christ and are blind to our true spiritual condition.  The trinity gives the church a form of godliness, but it cannot give them victory over sin. It is high time that we awake to our true condition before God.  If we continue to worship the god of the trinity, when the judgment comes, He will spew us out of His mouth and we will be lost.  The Faithful and True Witness to us is this "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." (Revelation 3:18). My friend, if we are to once again to be the light of the world we must be zealous in our repentance and come out of this terrible deception.  We must come back to the worship of the One true God of the bible and worship Him in spirit and in truth.  When we do this, we will be filled with His Spirit at the time of the Latter Rain and bring the Three Angels Message to the world with power, that many will be saved. God bless,

Video of the Week Pagan Origins of the Trinity - Nader Mansour Who are the gods of Babylon? What does that have to do with us in the last days? This presentation deals with the origins of one of the most fatal deceptions prepared for the last days. It might very well challenge you, but you will enjoy it.