Those who open the Scriptures and feed upon the heavenly manna become partakers of the divine nature....

What an encouragement it is that the sower is not always to meet with disappointment. The seed is sometimes received into honest hearts. The hearers comprehend the truth and do not resist the Holy Spirit or refuse to receive the impression of truth upon their hearts.... They receive the truth into the heart, and it accomplishes its transforming work upon the character. They are not able to change their own hearts, but the Holy Spirit, through their obedience to the truth, sanctifies the soul.

The good heart does not mean a heart without sin, for the gospel is to be preached to the lost. Jesus says, “I came not to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance.” Convicted sinners see themselves as transgressors in the great moral mirror, God's holy law. They look upon the Savior upon the cross of Calvary and ask why this great sacrifice was made; and the cross points to the holy law of God, which has been transgressed. It was to save the transgressor from ruin that He who was coequal with God offered up His life on Calvary.... The law has no power to pardon the evil-doer; but Jesus has taken the sins of the transgressor upon Himself, and as a sinner exercises faith in Him as the sacrifice, Christ imputes His own righteousness to the guilty one. There has been but one way of salvation since the days of Adam. “There is none other name under heaven given among men, whereby we must be saved.” We have no reason to fear while we are looking to Jesus, believing that He is able to save all who come unto Him.

As the result of active faith in Christ we are brought into the moral warfare with the world, the flesh, and the devil. If we undertake this warfare in our own wisdom, our human ability, we shall certainly be overcome; but if we exercise living faith in Jesus, and practice godliness, we shall understand what it means to be sanctified through the truth, and we shall not be overcome in the conflict, for heavenly angels encamp around about us. Christ is the captain of our salvation. He it is who strengthens His followers for the moral conflict which they are pledged to undertake....

Those who open the Scriptures and feed upon the heavenly manna become partakers of the divine nature. They have no life or experience apart from Christ.... They know that in character they must be like Him with whom God is well pleased.—The Review and Herald, June 28, 1892. FH 110


You have confessed your sins, and in heart put them away. You have resolved to give yourself to God. Now go to Him, and ask that He will wash away your sins and give you a new heart. Then believe that He does this because He has promised. This is the lesson which Jesus taught while He was on earth, that the gift which God promises us, we must believe we do receive, and it is ours. Jesus healed the people of their diseases when they had faith in His power; He helped them in the things which they could see, thus inspiring them with confidence in Him concerning things which they could not see—leading them to believe in His power to forgive sins. This He plainly stated in the healing of the man sick with palsy: “That ye may know that the Son of man hath power on earth to forgive sins, (then saith He to the sick of the palsy,) Arise, take up thy bed, and go unto thine house.” Matthew 9:6. So also John the evangelist says, speaking of the miracles of Christ, “These are written, that ye might believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God; and that believing ye might have life through His name.” John 20:31. SC 49



But other fell into good ground, and brought forth fruit, some an hundredfold, some sixtyfold, some thirtyfold. Matthew 13:8 (King James Version)