IMPORTANCE OF DOING JUST AS GOD COMMANDS US

God is not a man or a child that he should err. When he speaks, he wants us to hearken and obey. The fact that God commands us to keep the seventh day should be sufficient to lead us to keep that day. But besides this fact, God gives good reasons to induce us to obedience. We learn from the history of the past that serious consequences have resulted from seemingly small deviations from the word of God. The fall of our first parents was because they made no difference between the fruit God had given them and that which he had wisely withheld from them. God punished Nadab and Abihu, sons of Aaron, with death by fire, because in officiating as priests they made no difference between sacred fire and common fire. Leviticus 10. Naaman, the Syrian, could be healed of his leprosy only when, at the order of God, he submitted to wash seven times in Jordan instead of washing in the clear and inviting streams of his own country. 2 Kings 5. Read also 1 Samuel 6:19; 15:10-23; 2 Samuel 6:7; Acts 5:1, etc. God does not change. It was in taking the liberty of deviating from the word of God in apparently small things that the “mystery of iniquity” and error was developed. Now, in order that the truth may be restored, it is necessary to be as particular in returning to the word of God as men have been slack and careless in departing from the form of sound doctrine which that word presents.RFOS 76.2

“Therefore to him that knoweth to do good and doeth it not, to him it is sin.” James 4:17.RFOS 77.1