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A Personal Testimony
" y e a r e c om p l e t e i n h i m " (Col. 2:10) The Lord has further shown us that, so far from finding it a deprivation to withdraw ourselves from the pursuits and amusements of the camp and from its godless mirth, which is as the crackling of dry thorns under a pot, we have in fact gained unspeakably thereby. The new interests which now occupy us (having to do with Him in whose presence is full ness of joy, and at whose right hand are pleasures for ever more,) are far more satisfying, and contribute far more real gratification than all the things in which, for want of knowl edge of something better, we used to be interested, and in the pursuit of which we spent our time and money. It seems, humanly speaking, impossible to make our friends and asso ciates in the old life understand that we have not suffered any deprivations whatever. "Having the understanding dark ened,” they can only see the worthless things which we have cast aside, and can take no cognizance of the riches of grace and glory which the believer in Christ has, "in whom it hath pleased the Father that all fulness should dwell” (Col. 1:19). I t is as if a beggar were given, through kingly munificence, a suit of rich apparel, and should hasten to put it on, joyfully casting aside the rags with which he was previously clad, and some onlookers, likewise clad in dingy garments, should be able to see only the discarded rags, and should thereupon hasten away clasping their own rags tightly around them for fear a like experience might befall them. " i f i go , i w il l com e a g a in ” (John 14:3) The Lord has also enabled us to look beyond “this present evil age,” of which Satan is the god, to the age that is soon to come, in which Christ will return to earth, and all His redeemed with Him, as prophesied since Enoch’s time (Jude 14; Rev. 19:11-16, etc.), and “to the times of restitution of all things which God hath spoken by the mouth of all His holy prophets since the world began” (Acts 3:21).
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