SDA Daily Devotion

If we love God and keep His commandments, we need not expect the world to be in sympathy with us, any more than it was with Christ. . . . Because the truth contradicts the doctrines of men and condemns their unrighteous practices, it excites the most bitter opposition. The majority, even of those who bear Christ's name, are unwilling to follow His example of self-denial and cross-bearing; and as they become more and more alienated from Him, they cannot distinguish between the heavenly and the earthly; their peace is disturbed by the fact that there is a people that serve God and renounce every sinful practice. Men who are trampling upon God's requirements feel a constant rebuke from the course of those who render obedience to Him; and this is why such enmity is manifested against all who are true to God. For this reason the Pharisees rejected Christ, and the same spirit still exists, and will continue to exist until the close of time. . . . The most bitter and cruel persecution always comes from those who have the form of religion without the spirit and power of godliness

Perfect obedience to the law of God is the test by which it is known that our love is perfect toward Christ. The Father reveals His love to Christ by receiving and welcoming the friends of Christ as His friends. The Father is fully satisfied with the atonement that Christ has made. He suffered the penalty of the law in order that man might have an opportunity to exercise repentance towards God and faith toward our Lord Jesus Christ. In behalf of sinners Christ has borne hardships, insults, calumny, abuse, an misrepresentation. He was refused by those He came to save, rejected by His own nation. The Lord of glory was put to a most shameful death, and God Himself was in Christ, suffering with His only-begotten Son, in order to reconcile the world unto Himself. All this was done in order that fallen man might have another chance by which to redeem himself. Christ imputes His righteousness to the repentant, believing soul, and he who receives Christ becomes the friend of God.

In 1833, ... the last of the signs appeared which were promised by the Saviour as tokens of His second advent. Said Jesus, “The stars shall fall from heaven.” And John in the Revelation declared, as he beheld in vision the scenes that should herald the day of God, “The stars of heaven fell unto the earth, even as a fig tree casteth her untimely figs, when she is shaken of a mighty wind.” This prophecy received a striking and impressive fulfilment in the great meteoric shower of November 13, 1833. That was the most extensive and wonderful display of falling stars which has ever been recorded; “the whole firmament, over all the United States, being then, for hours, in fiery commotion! No celestial phenomenon has ever occurred in this country, since its first settlement, which was viewed with such intense admiration by one class in the community, or with so much dread and alarm by another.” “Its sublimity and awful beauty still linger in many minds.... Never did rain fall much thicker than the meteors fell toward the earth; east, west, north, and south, it was the same. In a word, the whole heavens seemed in motion.... The display, as described in Professor Silliman’s Journal, was seen all over North America.... From two o’clock until broad daylight, ... an incessant play of dazzlingly brilliant luminosities was kept up in the whole heavens.”—R. M. Devens, American Progress; or, The Great Events of the Greatest Century, ch. 28, pars. 1-5.... – {Mar 151.2}
Thus was displayed the last of those signs of His coming, concerning which Jesus bade His disciples, “When ye shall see all these things, know that it is near, even at the doors.” After these signs, John beheld, as the great event next impending, the heavens departing as a scroll, while the earth quaked, mountains and islands removed out of their places, and the wicked in terror sought to flee from the presence of the Son of man. – {Mar 151.3}
But the day and the hour of His coming Christ has not revealed.... The exact time of the second coming of the Son of man is God’s mystery. – {Mar 151.4}