Standing in the Way of God’s Messages
St. Helena, California
December 4, 1905
This manuscript is published in entirety in SpTB #7 57-60.
One thing it is certain is soon to be realized—the great apostasy, which is developing and increasing and waxing stronger, and will continue to do so until the Lord shall descend from heaven with a shout. We are to hold fast the first principles of our denominated faith and go forward from strength to increased faith. Ever we are to keep the faith that has been substantiated by the Holy Spirit of God from the earlier events of our experience until the present time. We need now larger breadth, and deeper, more earnest, unwavering faith in the leadings of the Holy Spirit. If we needed the manifest proof of the Holy Spirit’s power to confirm truth in the beginning, after the passing of the time, we need today all the evidence in the confirmation of the truth, when souls are departing from the faith and giving heed to seducing spirits and doctrines of devils. There must not be any languishing of soul now. 20LtMs, Ms 111, 1905, par. 1
If ever there was a period of time when we needed the Holy Spirit’s power in our discourses, in our prayers, in every action proposed, it is now. We are not to stop at the first experience, but while we bear the same message to the people, this message is to be strengthened and enlarged. We are to see and realize the importance of the message, made certain by its divine origin. We are to follow on to know the Lord, that we may know that His going forth is prepared as the morning. 20LtMs, Ms 111, 1905, par. 2
Our souls need the quickening from the Source of all power. We may be strengthened and confirmed in the past experience that holds us to the essential points of truth which have made us what we are—Seventh-day Adventists. 20LtMs, Ms 111, 1905, par. 3
The past fifty years have not dimmed one jot or principle of our faith as we received the great and wonderful evidences that were made certain to us in 1844, after the passing of the time. The languishing souls are to be confirmed and quickened according to His Word. And many of the ministers of the gospel and the Lord’s physicians will have their languishing souls quickened according to the Word. Not a word is changed or denied. That which the Holy Spirit testified to as truth after the passing of the time, in our great disappointment, is the solid foundation of truth. Pillars of truth were revealed, and we accepted the foundation principles that have made us what we are—Seventh-day Adventists, keeping the commandments of God and having the faith of Jesus. 20LtMs, Ms 111, 1905, par. 4
Have not the hearts of Christ’s disciples burned within them as He has talked with us by the way and opened to us the Scriptures? Has not the Lord Jesus opened to us the Scriptures and presented to us things kept secret from the foundation of the world? Some have heard the reading of the evidence of the binding claims of the law of God, and the enjoined obedience to His commandments, and have felt their characters to be in such contrast to the requirements that, had they been placed in circumstances similar to Jehoiakim, king of Judah, they would have done as he did. A special message was sent to him to be read in his hearing, but after listening to three or four pages, he cut it out with a penknife and cast it into the fire. But this could not destroy the message; for the Word of God will never return unto Him void. The same Holy Spirit who had given the first testimony, which was refused and burned, came to the servant of God, who caused the first to be written in the roll, and repeated the very message that had been rejected, caused the latter to be written, and added a great deal more to it. 20LtMs, Ms 111, 1905, par. 5
Those who are willing to have the straight, plain messages of God consumed, to get them out of their sight, will only give increased publicity to, and confirmation of, the messages that they dismissed and repulsed. When the Lord sends a message to any man or woman, and they refuse to be corrected, refuse to receive it, that is not the end of the message by any means. All the transaction is recorded; and those who took part in it, by their refusal to be corrected, pronounce their own sentence against themselves. 20LtMs, Ms 111, 1905, par. 6
When God sends a message to any person, minister or doctor; if men pursue a course to make of no effect the message sent, a course that destroys the influence of the message that God designed should make a change in the principles of the one corrected and turn his heart to repentance, it would be better for these men if they had never been born. Wickedness and deceit remain in the one to whom the Lord in mercy sent His message; but they, through Satan’s devising, took it upon themselves to justify and vindicate the one whom God had corrected; and he took it upon himself to refuse the message given and went on, sustained by men who claimed to be the ministers and doctors of the Lord. The one who should have realized his sin and corrected his evil was presumptuous and turned from the message of God to follow his own course, until sin—in deception, in falsehood, in unprincipled working, in underhand dealing—became current. Whether there is any hope of a change, we know not. But all who have built that man up in his crooked course of action, which they know was not justice and righteousness, will suffer with the transgressor, unless they shall humble themselves before God and show that repentance that needeth not to be repented of. 20LtMs, Ms 111, 1905, par. 7
Thus saith the Lord, I am the high and holy One who inhabiteth eternity. The Lord God will be vindicated in the interest He has taken to bring men to repentance, that they should see their crooked ways and turn and be converted. But ministers and doctors have stepped in between God and men reproved and have made of no effect the reproofs He has sent, notwithstanding that the warning was to save erring men and turn them from their wrong course of action, that their usefulness should not be destroyed, that they should repent and be converted, and their sins, which are now registered in the books of heaven, be blotted out. 20LtMs, Ms 111, 1905, par. 8
The Spirit who asked Zechariah, “What seest thou?” to which he answered, “I see a flying roll,” also caused an angel to fly in the midst of heaven, “having the everlasting gospel to preach unto them that dwell on the earth, and to every nation, and kindred, and tongue, and people, saying with a loud voice, Fear God, and give glory to Him (let no glory be given to erring, sinful men); for the hour of His judgment is come.” [Zechariah 5:2; Revelation 14:6, 7.] Many indeed will not understand, but will stumble at the words contained in the roll. 20LtMs, Ms 111, 1905, par. 9